Compact Process for the Preparation of Microfine Spherical High-Niobium-Containing TiAl Alloy Powders

High-Nb-containing TiAl alloys are a new generation of materials for high-temperature structural applications because of their superior high-temperature mechanical properties. The alloy powders can be widely used for additive manufacturing, thermal spraying, and powder metallurgy. Because of the difficulty of making microfine spherical alloy powders in quantity by conventional techniques, a compact method was proposed, which consisted of two-step ball milling of elemental powders and subsequent radio frequency (RF) argon plasma spheroidization. In comparison with conventional mechanical alloying techniques, the two-step milling process can be used to prepare alloy powders with uniform scale in a short milling time with no addition of process control agent. This makes the process effective and less contaminating. After RF argon plasma spheroidization, the powders produced exhibit good sphericity, and the number-average diameter is about 8.2 mu m with a symmetric unimodal particle size distribution. The powders perform high composition homogeneity and contain predominately supersaturated alpha (2)-Ti3Al phase. The oxygen and carbon contents of the spheroidized powder are 0.47% and 0.050%, respectively.