Institute of Metals Division - Determination of Interstitial Solid-Solubility Limit in Tantalum and Identification of the Precipitate Phases (Discussion)

A. U. Seybolt (General Electric Research Laboratory)—The authors should be commended for adding some important information to our knowledge of the solubility of interstitial elements in metals. It is becoming increasingly evident that the effect of even traces of such elements have very far-reaching effects upon the mechanical properties of the body centered cubic metals. Those who have worked in this area know that the accurate determination of the small solid solubility limits in systems of the type reported by the authors is a quite difficult task, and it is therefore not surprising that frequently the results of different workers are not in agreement. It is instructive, and usually helpful, to plot the solubility results on log weight or atomic percent -1/T coordinates to find out if a straight line is obtained. A straight line is expected because in systems displaying solubilities of the order of 1 to 3 at. pet or less, Henry's law is usually obeyed—or at least well enough obeyed so that the deviation from linearity is not very appreciable. If Henry's law is obeyed, one canthen use the Van't Hoff Equation in the form In N = ?H/RT + C, where N is mole fraction, at. pet, or wt pet for small values, and AH is the partial molal heat of solution of the solute. R and T have the usual significance, and C is an integration constant. If one plots the reported nitrogen solubility values as indicated above, the three points fall reasonably well on a straight line. The oxygen values for the two upper temperatures fall very closely to the nitrogen values as shown in the authors' Fig. 15. However, the value at 500°C departs widely from the straight line established by the data at 1500" and 1000°C. It is, of course, true that one cannot place too much emphasis on the significance of a line established by only three points, but in the absence of reasons for anticipating deviations, data exhibiting wide departures from linearity should at least be examined closely. Fig. 16 shows the log at. pct -1/T plots for the authors Ta-O and Ta-Ndata including a solid circle point at 500°C and 1.8 at. pet for Ta-O, which is simply extrapolated from the two higher temperature points. In addition, the data of R. P. Elliott9 for Nb-O are shown. These points were picked off his curve and are not very exact, but as can be seen they line up well on a straight line. It is interesting, and probably significant, that the slope of Elliott's results is not far from those of Vaughn, et al. This is probably to be expected because one would anticipate that the partial molal heats of solution of oxyten in these two very similar metals should be not too far apart. AH for Ta-O is about -1900 cal per mol, while for Nb-O it is near -2300 cal per mol. Hence, this lends some support to the thesis that the point at 500°C for Ta-O is much too high. The data of Gebhardt and Preisedanz10 are also plotted, and it is seen that their data while lying on a linear plot, have an appreciably steeper slope. The possible reasons for this will not be discussed here except to point out that their pressure-composition data show anomalies which suggest that they may have been dealing with a different equilibrium from that being discussed. There is another consideration which would also suggest that the solubility at 500°C is lower than shown. The solubility values were obtained by the classic method of first establishing a lattice parameter-composition curve. This the authors did, and there is probably little doubt that it is quite accurate. Such a plot is generally almost error-free because it has a self-correcting feature in that any deviation from linearity makes a data point immediately suspect, and subject to confirmation. Unfortunately, this is not true with respect to the actual solubility values. These are obtained ordinarily by taking an alloy containing more solute than is soluble at some temperature and then thermally