Influences of the Elaboration Conditions and Addition of Ni and Co on the Some Properties of the W-Cu Electrical Contacts Influences of the Elaboration Conditions and Addition of Ni and Co on the Some Properties of the W-Cu Electrical Contacts

This paper presents a study about the influence of some alloying elements like Ni and Co on the elaboration of W-Cu electrical contacts. For the experimental work four types of mixture were prepared using mechanical alloying (MA) technique for six hours. All the samples had the same Ni and Co content (2%) varying the W content as following: 88W-10Cu-Ni, 78W-20Cu-Ni, 68W-30Cu-Ni, 88W-10Cu-Co, 78W-20Cu-Co and 68W-30Cu-Co. The mixtures were pressed in a cylindrical die with 10 mm diameter at two pressures: 400MPa and 600 MPa. The sintering process was carried out in an electrical furnace at the 1180 C-O and maintained at this temperature for three hours. For all the samples the electrical properties: resistivity, conductivity, resistance were measured and were made correlation between electrical contacts with Ni and the other with Co. It is observed that, the compaction pressure influence the electrical properties and better properties are obtained for the samples compacted at 600 MPa.