Wettability for understanding the behaviour of new filler materials for sinter-brazing

The success of the sinter-brazing technique depends on the control of the liquid phase of the brazing alloy. Therefore, it is necessary to design the composition of the brazer taking into account its wettability, infiltration capacity, chemical reaction with the base material and development of the final microstructure. The present work pretends to analyse the wettability of a new proposal for sinter-brazing, in order to understand the behaviour of the liquid phase during sintering. For that purpose, the sessile drop technique is used for tracking the variation of the contact angle on different substrates and atmospheres. Fe and FeC are the chosen substrates and the experiments will be carried out under inert (Ar) and reducing (N-2-H-2) conditions. After the wetting test, SEM microscopy allows analysing the cross-section of the drop/substrate interface, so that important phenomena can be observed, such as dissolution of the solid, diffusion of alloying elements and formation of precipitates. Besides, DICTRA (R) software is used to simulate the kinetics of liquid/solid interaction and the possible dissolution processes. Furthermore, the wetting behaviour of the designed brazing alloy is compared with the wettability of commercial filler materials.