Lee, M. H.,Das, J.,Sordelet, D. J.,Eckert, J.,Hurd, A. J.

We investigated the effect of tungsten particle sizes on the thermal stability and reactivity of uniformly dispersed W particles in molten Hf-based alloy melt at elevated temperature ( 1673 K). The solubility of particles less than 100 nm in radius is significantly enhanced. In case of fine W particles with 20 nm diameter, their solubility increases remarkably around 700% compared to that of coarse micrometer-scale particles. The mechanisms and kinetics of this dynamic growth of particle are discussed as well as techniques developed to obtain frozen microstructure of particle-reinforced composites by rapid solidification.