Implementation of DSC analysis in reaction kinetics during heating of Ti-50 at.%Al powder mixture

In this study, the reactions in Ti-50 at.%Al powder mixture upon heating at constant heating rates were studied using DSC analysis. Heating up the mixture resulted in melting of aluminum at temperatures close to its melting temperature, which was manifested as an endothermic peak in DSC curves. The melting of aluminum was the onset of an intense exothermic reaction, so-called combustion synthesis reaction which results in the formation of titanium aluminide. The shift in exothermic peak temperature in various linear heating rates was used to calculate the apparent activation energy according to Kissinger-type model-free methods. Heating rates of 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50 K min(-1) were used to estimate the activation energy based on DSC data. In order to study the effect of ball-milling on reaction behavior, the starting powder mixture was ball-milled for different times, and a comparison was made between non-ball-milled and ball-milled DSC curves. The results showed that ball-milling tends to diminish the endothermic peak of melting of aluminum and shift the exothermic reaction temperature to lower temperatures, apparently altering the mechanism from a solid-liquid to an almost solid-solid one. The activation energy of the process in the non-ball-milled state was found to be close to the activation energy of diffusion of aluminum in TiAl (220 kJ mol(-1)). However, the application of same model-free methods to the ball-milled samples showed unexpectedly increased values for activation energy. It would be appropriate to check other methods as well as for calculation of activation energy in the ball-milled systems.