CONSOLIDATIONOFAMORPHOUSPOWDERBYFLAMESPRAYINGMETHODSTRUCTURE,PROCESS,ANDAPPLICATION.docVIP

CONSOLIDATION OF AMORPHOUS POWDER BY FLAME SPRAYING METHOD: STRUCTURE, PROCESS, AND APPLICATION E.Brook-Levinson, V.Manov Advanced Metal Technologies Ltd. 1 Ha’hatsmaut St., Even Yehuda, Israel Introduction These are the attractive magnetic, electrical, mechanical, corrosion and wear resistant properties of the amorphous solids, which make them the object of intensive investigations [1]. Amorphous materials are prepared mainly in the form of thin ribbons and powders. Bulk amorphous materials are still on the way although some compositions have been successfully produced as bulk amorphous materials (see, e.g. [2]). Methods for powder consolidation can be used for preparation of amorphous solids with finite dimensions. In particular, plasma spray was successfully used for consolidation of amorphous powder [3]. Alternatively flame-spraying method can be also used for consolidating amorphous powders. This paper presents the results of amorphous powder consolidation by HVOF process and shortly describes application of these results to fabrication of heating elements. The problem of amorphous powder consolidation by thermal spraying methods is not easy to solve for at least the two reasons. On the one hand, the amorphous must be heated to the temperature, which provides good adhesion of the powder particles to some substrate materials, and cohesion between the amorphous particles. On the other hand, amorphous particles being heated to certain temperature (crystallization temperature) undergoes amorphous-to-crystalline solid transition, and consequently loose their properties ascribed to their amorphous structure. The solution lies in fine tuning the process varying thermal and aerodynamic properties of the thermal spray jet, distance between the torch and substrate, the structure of the jet, size distribution and properties of the amorphous powders, etc. The structure of the paper is following. In Section 1 we give a theoretical analysis of thermal and mechanical