Selective laser melting of nano-TiB2 decorated AlSi10Mg alloy with high fracture strength and ductility

Novel Composite Powders with Uniform TiB2 Nano-Particle Distribution for 3D Printing

“…The paralleled crystallographic planes and orientations are marked by red and green circles, respectively. The orientation relationship is consistent with OR1: (0001) TiB2 ||(111) Al [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] The statistical analyses of the orientation relationship of recorded TiB 2 particles inside grains and along grain boundaries are summarized in Tables 1 and 2, respectively. Overall, the majority of particles inside the grains ( [23].…”

“…In a recent It is pointed out in [19] that along with the decreasing powder size, the rapid solidification microstructure can change from dendritic grains to cellular and even to equiaxed grains. In a recent study, Zheng et al [14] investigated atomized Al-Cu-Mg (grade 2024) alloy powders, which exhibit a large dendrite structure. In the current study, the composite powders had a much finer equiaxed grain structure (Figure 2(c1-f1)).…”

“…The reasons for this are three-fold: (1) the composite powders with higher laser absorptivity will benefit the melt formation during SLM [14]; (2) the introduced nano-sized TiB 2 was pre-embedded mainly into the powder and only a limited proportion was distributed on the powder surface, thus not imposing any negative effect on the flowability of the matrix Al-Cu powder; (3) the interfacial bonding between the nano-sized TiB 2 and the Al-Cu matrix was strong in the gas-atomized composite powder, which can help limit the interface de-bonding during rapid solidification in SLM. …”

“…Sci. 2017, 7, 250 5 of 9 study, Zheng et al [14] investigated atomized Al-Cu-Mg (grade 2024) alloy powders, which exhibit a large dendrite structure. In the current study, the composite powders had a much finer equiaxed grain structure (Figure 2(c1-f1)).…”

“…The resulting Al-based composite powders exhibited a fine grain structure, with uniformly dispersed TiB 2 nanoparticles, and thereby are promising candidates for nanocomposite synthesis. Since one of the major challenges in the laser-based additive manufacturing (AM) field (e.g., selective laser melting) is the severe limitation of powder materials with acceptable laser processability [11][12][13], the introduction of pre-embedded nanometer-sized TiB 2 into the metal matrix (e.g., Al-Cu-Mg in this study) would help to expand the powder materials' palette for AM due to the higher laser absorptivity of TiB 2 compared to the Al matrix [14]. Furthermore, since the nanometer-sized TiB 2 particles are embedded into spherical, micrometer-sized composite powders obtained by gas atomization, the powder flowability is not jeopardized.…”