High quality osmium targets are the key influence in improving the emission performance, lifetime and reliability of M-type cathodes. In this experiment, oxidative distillation was used to prepare osmium powder with a purity greater than 99.99%. The effect of hydrogen sintering and hot pressing sintering processes on the densities and grain size of the targets was investigated. The results show that the oxidation distillation process can effectively separate Os from Si, Fe, Ni, Zn and other impurity elements, and the purity of osmium powder prepared by multiple oxidation distillation was not less than 99.99%. Both hydrogen sintering and hot pressing sintering processes can be used to obtain osmium targets with a density of not less than 95%. However, the sintering temperature and time used in the hot pressing sintering process under pressure assistance are significantly lower than those of hydrogen sintering, which is more conducive to inhibiting grain growth during the high densification sintering process. By optimizing the parameters of the hot pressing sintering process, the sintering temperature of 1500°C and the holding time of 1.5h resulted in an osmium target with a density of 99.11% and a grain size of ≤12. XPS analysis of the highly dense fine crystalline osmium targets prepared by hot pressing sintering showed that the C and O mass fractions on the surface of the targets were 0.85% and 4.43% respectively, and the C and O contents gradually decreased with increasing etching depth. The above highly dense and fine crystalline osmium targets can be used in the M-type cathode standard coating process to obtain high purity, dense and strong bonded osmium films.
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