The influence of chemical composition on microstructure, hardness and electrical conductivity of Ag-Bi-In alloys at 100 °C

Abstract

Considering possible applications and scarceness of literature data, Ag-Bi-In system was investigated in terms of microstructure, mechanical and electrical properties of ternary alloys from an isothermal section at 100oC. Based on the experimentally obtained results hardness and electrical conductivity of all ternary alloys from the ternary Ag-Bi-In system at 100oC were predicted. In addition, the selected isothermal section was further thermodynamically assessed and experimentally studied using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) with energy dispersive spectrometry (EDS), X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) analysis and light optical microscopy (LOM). Phase transition temperatures of alloys with overall compositions along vertical sections x(Ag)=0.5 as well as liquidus temperatures were experimentally determined by DTA. The experimentally obtained results were compared with literature data and with the results of thermodynamic calculation of phase equilibria based on CALPHAD method and corrected data for Ag-In binary system. Calculated liquidus projection, invariant equilibria and phase diagram of the Ag-Bi-In ternary system are presented as well.

Keywords

• Ag-Bi-In system
• thermodynamic assessment
• microstructural analysis
• hardness
• electrical conductivity