The Study On Deformation-Processes Cu-Fe In Situ Composite

With the development of science and technology, in order to ease the weight, guarantee the stability and longer the service life of conductive materials, it's strength is also required, besides it's electrical conductivity. As Cu-Fe in situ composite is high in properties and low in cost, deformed Cu-Fe alloy has become one of the new developing materials with high strength and high conductivity.In this paper, solution-treated and aging treatment are conducted on Cu-13.2Vol.%Fe and Cu-19.3Vol.% Fe alloy. We systematically investigated the relationship between the properties and the processes in Cu-13.2Vol.%Fe and Cu-19.3Vol.%Fe in situ composite by means of the electrical conductivity measurement, hardness testing, tensile testing, X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM), and transmission electron microscope(TEM). Aging treatment significantly improves the electrical conductivity and strength. This is attributed to the precipitation of incoherent Fe. When aged for 2 hour, an optimum aging temperature of 550 C is recommended. At lower aging temperature, the precipitate particles are lesser and at higher aging temperature, some of the precipitates redissolve which make the electrical conductivity and the tensile strength of the material decrease.The effects of cold drawing combined with intermediate heat treatments on the properties of Cu-13.2Vol.%Fe and Cu-19.3Vol.%Fe alloy have been investigated. During cold working, the primary and secondary dendrite arms are aligned along the drawing direction and elongated into filaments which improve the strength of the alloy. After cold drawing and intermediate heat treatments processes, the samples show higher electricalconductivity than that of samples without intermediate heat treatments. This is attributed to the rapid precipitation of incoherent Fe, which is due to the high vacancy and dislocation density in the Cu matrix after the cold deformation.