Part VIII - Papers - The Constitution of Binary Molybdenum-Carbon Alloys

The binary alloy system Mo-C zoas investigated by means of X-ray, metallog/aphic, thermoanalytical, and melting-point techniques on chemically analyzed specimens. The system, Fig. 39, is characterized by three congruently melting, intermediate phases, Mo2C, n MoCi-x, and aMoC1-,, of which only Mo,C is stable at temperatures below 1650°C. Substoichio-metrzc (~32.5 at. pct C) dimolybdenum carbide undergoes a homogeneous sublattice order-disorder transformation at temperatures of approximately 1400°C, whereas hyperstoichiorrletric compositions undergo a discontinuous Phase change. The order-disorder transitions in the Me, C phases are discussed in terms of the structural changes involved in the transformation processes and the absence of long-range sublattice coherency in stoichiometric or hyperstoiclziomet-ric compositions attributed to the impossibility of obtaining long-range order in a linear chain of alternating carbon atoms and vacancies. From the experimental phase relutionships and the known thermody-namic data for Mo2 C, limits for the free energies of formation for the high-temperature phases r) MoC1-, and aMoC1-, are deriued and found to be in good agreement with data previously obtained from phase equilibria in ternary metal-carbon systems. IN the course of studies of the high-temperature phase relationships in ternary systems of refractory transition metals with carbon,' a number of inconsistencies found in previous work necessitated a reex-amination of some of the related metal-carbon binaries. A reassessment of the binary system data also seemed