Annealing induced shrinkage-fill effect of tungsten‑potassium alloys with trace titanium doping

Abstract The shrinkages presented in sintering process of tungsten alloys are extremely detrimental to their practical applications in fusion reactors. Positively in this work, we effectively reduced the shrinkages via synergistically applying Ti-doping and annealing process on tungsten‑potassium (WK) alloys. This shrinkage-fill effect only works in the one with trace amount of titanium doping, such as 0.05 wt%Ti or 0.5 wt%Ti. Due to such effect, the compressive strength was improved by ~18%. Based on morphological and elementary analyses, we speculated that the Ti-rich particles along the grain boundaries of WK alloys were activated and migrated into shrinkages during annealing. Further Ti doping (e.g. 1wt.%Ti) led to nanoscale grain refinement in WK alloys, which almost doubled the compressive strength. In this case, an unconventional grain-refinement model was proposed. Furthermore, anomalous grain growth was observed in WK-3wt.%Ti, which was attributed to the formation of Ti-rich regions and the corresponding raise of energy in grain boundaries. The fabricating strategies in this work may benefit the design of refractory tungsten alloys with less shrinkages and ultra-fine grains.