The lifetimes and the premature wear of machining tools impact on manufacturing efficiencies and productivities. A significant proportion of machining tool damage can be attributed to component wear. Here, titanium aluminium nitride (TiAlN) multi-layered with titanium diboride (TiB2) prepared by PVD (Physical Vapour Deposition) sputtering onto H-13 substrates are studied as potential wear-resis...

In this work, a fine-grained structure with a uniform distribution of TiB2 particles and precipitates was achieved in TiB2 particle-reinforced (PR) Al-Zn-Mg-Cu alloys by friction stir processing (FSP). The effects of multi-pass FSP on the microstructure, and TiB2 particle distribution, as well as the microstructural evolution in the following T6 treatment, were investigated by X-ray diffraction...

The formation of in situ AlN-TiN-TiB2/Al composite inoculants, which contain multi-phase refiner particles including AlN, TiN, TiB2, Al3Ti, and α-Al, was investigated using nitrogen gas injection. The effects of the main preparation parameters such as nitriding temperature, nitriding time, Ti content in melts, on the microstructure and grain refinement of in situ AlN-TiN-TiB2/Al composite inocu...

Nickel titanium (NiTi) foams were made by combustion synthesis of powders with the help of ZrH2 as foaming agent and TiB2 as endothermic agent. In this paper, we investigated the effect of elemental powder size on the foaming. The powder size of Ni and Ti affected the ignition temperature of the combustion reaction, cell morphology and microstructure of the foams. The cell morphology of the foa...

TiB2 thin films are well known for their high hardness which makes them useful for wear-resistant applications. Overstoichiometric TiB2 deposited at 300 °C by nonreactive sputtering has been shown to exhibit superhardness sHù40 GPad, while the hardness of their bulk stoichiometric counterparts is ,25 GPa. We show, using high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, that overstoichiometric T...

Nickel chromium (NiCr) powders with different titanium diboride (TiB2) additions (20, 40 and 60 wt %) were prepared with a mechanical alloying method and then sprayed using an air plasma spraying technology. The microstructure and phase composite of the powders and the cross-sections of deposited coatings were analyzed with a scanning electronic microscope and X-ray diffraction. The tribologica...

We have deposited weakly textured substoichiometric NbB2-x thin films by magnetron sputtering from a NbB2 target. The films exhibit superhardness (42 ± 4 GPa), previously only observed in overstoichiometric TiB2 thin films, and explained by a self-organized nanostructuring, where thin TiB2 columnar grains hinder nucleation and slip of dislocations and a B-rich tissue phase between the grains pr...