Nanostructured titanium monoboride monolithic material and associated methods

Abstract

A nanostructured monolithic titanium boride (TiB) material and methods of forming such a material are disclosed and described. This material has a room-temperature four-point flexural strength about three times that of commercially available titanium diboride (TiB2). The achievement of nanostructured internal microstructural arrangement having a network of interconnected titanium monoboride whiskers affords a very high strength to this material above some of the best ceramic materials available in the market. The material contains a small amount of titanium, but it is largely made of TiB phase with substantially no TiB2. The nanostructured monolithic titanium boride material can be formed by high temperature processing of a powder precursor having carefully selected weight and size distributions of titanium and titanium diboride powders. Potential applications of this material can include wear resistant components such as die inserts for extrusion dies, nozzles, armor, electrodes for metal refining etc. An important advantage of TiB over other hard ceramics is that TiB can be cut by electro-discharge machining (EDM) without difficulty, unlike most ceramics.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.