The Common Road to The Price of Tungsten Rhenium Alloy

Tungsten, as a high temperature resistant metal material, is used as the filament or electrode of the energy saving lamp and as a variety of electronic emitter. But the tungsten itself has the problem of brittle and low plasticity, which greatly reduces the life of its use. In order to reduce the brittleness of tungsten and to improve its plasticity, the traditional method is to increase its properties by adding rare earth metals in tungsten to form tungsten based alloys.

Add 3 - 5% in the tungsten rhenium, can greatly increase the plasticity of tungsten rhenium, but is expensive and rare metal, so to find a reliable solution to reduce the cost of it is important to make the tungsten rhenium alloy prices go down, searching for alternative materials is essential.

Cerium is a kind of rare earth element. Relative to rhenium, cerium is the most abundant rare earth element, and it also has the effect of reducing the brittleness of tungsten and improving the plasticity. It is a more feasible choice to replace rhenium with cerium, and it is also verified in the experiment. The preparation method includes the following steps:

1. According to the mass percentage, the mixture of cerium 1 - 3%, rhenium 0.01 - 0.1%, tungsten residue is mixed with cerium, rhenium and ammonium paratungstate.

2.Under the condition of hydrogen, heating up the mixed liquid from the temperature of 300 to 1200 degrees and heating it to make cerium rhenium tungsten alloy powder, and the heating time is 70 to 90min.

3.The cerium rhenium tungsten alloy powder is heated in the hydrogen environment, and the temperature of 2300-2800 centigrade is 20 - 30min.

4.After natural cooling, the finished tungsten cerium electrode was obtained.

The addition of cerium greatly reduced the amount of rhenium, and cerium as the largest rare earth element in storage, the total cost was also reduced. The price of tungsten rhenium alloy was no longer so high, and the performance was not weakened due to the change of materials.

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