Why Tungsten Disulfide is Popular in Aerospace?

Tungsten disulfide is popular in aerospace as a new type of solid lubricating material. It can be coated on the parts of spaceflight apparatus, so as to extend their service lives as much as possible and ensure their stable works.

Why tungsten disulfide is so extremely popular in aerospace field? Here are some reasons as following as:

1. Tungsten disulfide has excellent resistance to high temperature and extreme pressure.

Tungsten disulfide work stably under the bad conditions such as high pressure, high pressure, vacuum and corrosion. The parts coated with it will have excellent lubricating performance. In the space vacuum environment, tungsten disulfide is the only coating that has self-lubricating ability.

2. Tungsten disulfide has conductivity.

Tungsten disulfide has semiconducting property and high electron mobility, together with suitable band gap. When its layer number is reduced from multilayer to monolayer, the indirect band gap of 1.3 eV will become the direct band gap of 2.1 eV. As a large number of materials applied in spaceflight apparatus are electrically conductive, tungsten disulfide has application value in aerospace field.

3. High purity tungsten disulfide is easily obtained.

High purity tungsten disulfide can be prepared by using ammonium tetrathiotungstate or tungsten trioxide as raw material. And the method of elemental synthesis can also be taken. Whatever the method, the preparation process is usually simple.

By contrast, the preparation process of lubricating grease or lubrication oil is complicated. It should be degassed when apparatus operates in a clean environment. Degassing is a process to remove the dissolved gas in the lubricating grease or oil, so as to prevent it from producing bubbles due to the pressure reduction in the elution process. These bubbles increase baseline noise, resulting in a decrease in sensitivity. And the dissolved oxygen will also cause the oxidation of some components in the lubricating grease or oil, affecting its performance.

Tungsten disulfide with high quality is easily obtained, which decreases the production cost and improves the production efficiency. So tungsten disulfide is a preferred material used in aerospace.

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