Affiliation:
1. Physics Department, Faculty of Science, King Khalid University, P.O. Box 9004, Abha 61413, Saudi Arabia
Abstract
The aim of this research is to assess the influence of Sn inclusion on the microstructure evolution and age-hardening response of a Zn-4Cu alloy. This is the first study to correlate the age-hardening response to the microstructure of Zn-4Cu alloy reinforced with different Sn contents. A series of Zn-4Cu-Sn alloys were successfully fabricated with different Sn concentrations in the range of 0.0–4.0 wt.% using permanent mold casting. The microstructure of Zn-4Cu-Sn alloys was investigated by means of a scanning electron microscope (SEM) attached with an energy dispersive spectroscope (EDS) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) line profile analysis. At room temperature, the Vickers microhardness measurements were used to assess the age-hardening response of alloys. The results show that the microhardness of the Zn-4Cu (ZC) binary alloy increases a little bit from 76 to 80 HV as the aging time increases from 2 to 128 h, respectively. For aging times up to 16 h, the microhardness of all Sn-containing alloys decreases but then increases again. The lowest hardness belongs to the ZC-1.5Sn alloy, and the Sn-Zn-3.0Sn alloy has the highest; the other alloys fall somewhere in between. At high aging times (64 and 128 h), the microhardness of all Sn-containing samples increased continuously with an increasing Sn content from 0.0 to 3.0 wt.%. When the Sn-containing alloys (3.5 and 4.0 wt.% Sn) were aged for 64 and 128 h, the hardness declined by 7.94% and 8.90% compared to their peak aging hardness values, respectively. By considering the structural changes that occur in the Zn-4Cu-Sn alloys, the reasons for the observed variations in microhardness data with increasing Sn content and aging time were elucidated. X-ray diffraction (XRD) data was analyzed to determine the zinc matrix’s lattice parameters, c/a ratio, and unit cell volume variations.
Subject
Inorganic Chemistry,Condensed Matter Physics,General Materials Science,General Chemical Engineering
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