CORROSION AND MECHANICAL BEHAVIOR OF COPPER- NIOBIUM NANO-FILAMENTARY MICRO-COMPOSITES FOR HIGH PERFORMANCE ELECTRICAL CONDUCTOR WIRE

Corrosion behavior of heavily drawn bundled Copper-niobium filamentary micro-composite was studied as a function of niobium content to develop the relationshipbetween microstructure and corrosion behavior in aqueous 30% HCl-FeCl3 solution.TEM observation revealed that niobium filaments were distributed regularly in coppermatrix along the sides of a triangular unit cell in the transverse section and more sub-grain boundaries were absorbed at copper/niobium phase boundaries with increasingniobium content. The corrosion potential and rate in aqueous 30% HCl-10% FeCl3 was-680.3mVSHE and 1.179×10-5A/cra2. The corrosion potential and rate decreasedas increasingniobium content and FeCl3. The yield stress can be described as thesum of the substructure strengthening component due to elongated grains, subgrainsand/or cells, the phase boundary strengthening term associated with the Hall-Petchtype interaction between dislocations and phase boundaries and precipitate strength-ening component.