Effect of rolling deformation on microstructure and properties of Cu–Ni–Mo alloy prepared by aluminothermic reaction

The metallic element Mo has almost no solid solubility in copper and can be used as a nucleation particle to refine the grain size and increase the recrystallization temperature of the alloy during solidification. It is expected to obtain copper alloys with good comprehensive properties by reasonably controlling the addition amount of Mo. However, it is difficult to prepare Cu–Mo alloys with uniform structure and there are few related literatures. In this paper, the aluminothermic reaction method, which has the advantages of simple process, low cost, and large size of the prepared alloy, was adopted, and a cluster model with the atomic ratio of Mo and Ni of 1:12 was introduced to design the alloy composition. Here, five alloys with different copper contents were prepared and followed by room temperature rolling with 40%, 60%, and 80% deformation. The results show that the as-cast Cu–Ni–Mo alloys exhibit good formability, have no macroscopic defects and present a small amount of precipitates. With the increase of alloy elements Ni and Mo, the hardness and strength of the alloys increase obviously, while the electrical conductivity decreases gradually. For the rolled alloys, a large number of lamellar deformed structures are formed, the grains are obviously refined, the precipitated phases are broken and the distribution is more uniform, thus the strength and hardness of the alloy increase significantly, the plasticity decrease significantly, while the conductivity changed little. In this study, high-strength samples were obtained, which may be a valuable exploration for the preparation of Cu–Ni–Mo alloy sheets with excellent microstructure and mechanical properties.