Contriving and Assessment of Magnesium Alloy Composites Augmented with Boron Carbide VIA Liquid Metallurgy Route

In modern engineering low-density composites plays a vital role of which magnesium alloys are very effective due to its high strength with better corrosion resistance and neat cast ability. In this work a micron sized Boron carbide ceramic (B4C) of about 100 microns is diffused as a reinforcement with AZ91 for preparing a magnesium metal matrix composite (MMMC) through stir casting route. A modified pit furnace setup is used for doing stir casting with varying volume fractions of 0％ and 3% of boron carbide for doing the composites. Furthermore mechanical and metallurgical properties like Tensile test is made through universal testing machine, Micro-hardness through Vickers hardness tester and Micro structure through Optical Microscopy is done for investigation.

Reversible Magnesium Metal Anode Enabled by Cooperative Solvation/Surface Engineering in Carbonate Electrolytes

Magnesium metal anode holds great potentials toward future high energy and safe rechargeable magnesium battery technology due to its divalent redox and dendrite-free nature. Electrolytes based on Lewis acid chemistry enable the reversible Mg plating/stripping, while they fail to match most cathode materials toward high-voltage magnesium batteries. Herein, reversible Mg plating/stripping is achieved in conventional carbonate electrolytes enabled by the cooperative solvation/surface engineering. Strongly electronegative Cl from the MgCl2 additive of electrolyte impairs the Mg…O = C interaction to reduce the Mg2+ desolvation barrier for accelerated redox kinetics, while the Mg2+-conducting polymer coating on the Mg surface ensures the facile Mg2+ migration and the effective isolation of electrolytes. As a result, reversible plating and stripping of Mg is demonstrated with a low overpotential of 0.7 V up to 2000 cycles. Moreover, benefitting from the wide electrochemical window of carbonate electrolytes, high-voltage (> 2.0 V) rechargeable magnesium batteries are achieved through assembling the electrode couple of Mg metal anode and Prussian blue-based cathodes. The present work provides a cooperative engineering strategy to promote the application of magnesium anode in carbonate electrolytes toward high energy rechargeable batteries.

Optimization of tribo-mechanical properties of boron carbide reinforced magnesium metal matrix composite

In this study, magnesium–boron carbide composites are developed through the powder metallurgy technique and investigated for their tribological properties using a pin-on-disc tribometer. The process parameters such as load, sliding distance, sliding velocity, and concentration (wt%) of boron carbide are optimized using Taguchi's L16 array. A lower wear rate of magnesium–boron carbide composite is obtained at optimized process parameters. Further, the analysis of variance result shows that the most dominating factor that affects the wear loss is load followed by concentration of boron carbide reinforcement. Moreover, the optimum parameters for the low wear rate of magnesium–boron carbide composites are obtained as 5 N, 6 wt% of boron carbide, 1200 m, and 3 m/s through signal-to-noise ratio analysis. Further, the mechanical properties of magnesium–boron carbide composites such as hardness and compressive strength are also analyzed. The result shows that the hardness and compressive strength of magnesium–boron carbide composites are improved with the inclusion of boron carbide reinforcement.