Institute of Metals Division - The Solubility of Carbon in Cobalt-Nickel Alloys at 1000°C (TN)

IN a recent paper on the solubility of carbon in Ni-Cu alloys,' Nicholson reported that the carbon solubility appeared to be limited by the electronic structure of the alloys and that the solubility was propor- tional to the density of states at the Fermi surface of the "3d" band. In order to determine whether or not this relationship is a general one, the study has been extended to other systems. One of these is the CO-Ni system. This system was chosen for study because 1) it is adjacent to Ni-Cu system in the periodic table, 2) the alloys of cobalt and nickel do not form stable carbides at 1000°C, and 3) the system exhibits no pronounced change (less than 1 pct) in lattice parameter from cobalt to nickel,' see Fig. 1. The alloys were prepared from -200-mesh 99.92 pct Ni furnished by the International Nickel Co. and spectroscopically pure -200-mesh cobalt sponge obtained from Johns on-Matthey and Co. The powders were weighed, mixed, and pressed using a pressure of 40,000 psi. The samples were sintered for 24 hr at 900° C in dry hydrogen and then cold rolled to a thickness of 0.010 in. (Samples containing more than 70 wt pct Co had to be annealed after cold reductions of about 20 pct to avoid cracking.) The alloys were carburized at 1000°C in an alun-durn boat containing Acheson AUC powdered graphite in an atmosphere of carbon monoxide cylinder gas which had been passed through Ascarite to remove carbon dioxide. After carburizing for either 12 or 24 hr the samples were moved to a cool zone of the furnace to cool. Cooling required about 5 min. The samples were filed to remove about 0.005 in. from the surface and then analyzed using a conventional combustion-gravimetric analytic method. The results of this investigation are shown in the lower portion of Fig. 1 and Tabulated in Table I. The nickel percentages for these alloys were determined from the weights of the powders from which the alloys were made. The solubility of carbon in pure cobalt at 1000°C (fcc) is 0.25 wt pct. This is somewhat less than the 0.33 wt pct measured by Boecker.3 From his data, it would appear Boecker's samples were supersaturated before the equilibrating treatment and that a 20-min treatment was not long enough to achieve equilibrium. Since in the present investigation the 12 and 24 treatments produced essentially equal carbon contents, our figure is presumed to represent more nearly the equilibrium value. The solubility of carbon in nickel of 0.19 wt pct agrees quite well with the value of 0.21 wt pct