Electrochemical preparation of titanium and titanium-copper alloys with K2Ti6O13 in KF-KCl melts

To investigate the electrodeposition mechanism of Ti^4＋, electrochemistry experiments were conducted using a KF-KCl-K2Ti6O13 molten salt at a Cu electrode at 950 ℃. Transient electrochemical techniques such as cyclic voltammetry（CV） and square-wave voltammetry were used in this study. The main phases and compositions of the product were analyzed by X-ray diffraction（XRD）, scanning electron microscopy（SEM）, and energy-dispersive spectrometry（EDS）. The resulting product has the structure of metallic Ti. The results indicate that Ti^4＋ is reduced to metallic Ti by a two-step mechanism, corresponding to the reduction pathway： Ti^4＋→ Ti^2＋→ Ti. Moreover, Cu-Ti alloy could be obtained by the potentiostatic electrolysis at a Cu electrode.