Preparation of Dispersion-Hardened Copper by Internal Oxidation

Internal oxidation experiments in CO2/CO atmospheres on Cu-Al alloys for preparation of dispersion-hardened Cu are described. The oxygen pressures of the atmospheres used in the experiments were controlled with a solid electrolyte oxygen cell based on ZrO2 (CaO). The particle size distributions of the A2O3 phase obtained in the oxidation experiments show that good reproducibility can be obtained with this method, both for specimens oxidized in the same run and for specimens oxidized in different runs under nominally identical conditions. The experiments also indicate that particle size increases with decreasing oxygen pressure of the atmosphere.