Achieving high strength, high ductility and high conductivity of additively manufactured CuCrZr alloy via control of powder bed temperature

The CuCrZr alloy produced by additive manufacturing has shown great potential for applications in aerospace and nuclear energy fields. However, CuCrZr alloys produced by direct additive manufacturing have lower performance and are struggling to meet application requirements. Therefore, aging heat treatment is usually required to improve their overall performance. Unfortunately, CuCrZr alloy parts with thin-walled, lattice-like, and complex structures can become deformed and scrapped during high-temperature treatment. Therefore, it is necessary to prepare CuCrZr alloys with excellent comprehensive properties in additive manufacturing processes. In this work, instead of using additional aging treatment, we demonstrate a novel dynamic adjustment strategy for powder bed temperature. By controlling the powder bed temperature in the electron beam powder bed fusion (EB-PBF) forming of CuCrZr alloy, nanoparticles can be precipitated in-situ, simultaneously improving the conductivity, ductility and strength of the sample, achieving an excellent combination of high strength (410 MPa) and high conductivity (90.1 %IACS). In addition, the advantages of controlling the powder bed temperature for printing CuCrZr alloy were revealed, and the influence of nano precipitation on mechanical and electrical properties was quantitatively analyzed. The current work opens up a new way for EB-PBFed precipitation hardening alloys to precipitate nanoparticles in-situ to enhance mechanical and electrical properties without additional aging heat treatment.

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