Materials Letters 237 (2019) 328–331

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Materials Letters
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/mlblue

Selective laser melting of tungsten-copper functionally graded material

Chaolin Tan a,b,⇑, Kesong Zhou a,b,⇑, Tongchun Kuang a
a
School of Materials Science and Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510640, China
b
Guangdong Institute of New Materials, Guangzhou 510651, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: A tungsten-copper functionally graded material was processed based on SLM additive manufacture
Received 5 October 2018 despite encountering some difficulties from materials characters. The effect of laser parameter on the
Received in revised form 5 November 2018 interfacial defects and bonding performance are evaluated. The SLM produced tungsten is in columnar
Accepted 24 November 2018
structures with random orientation. Plenty of fine tungsten grains are present at the bonding region,
Available online 27 November 2018
owing to a high cooling rate incited by the underlying copper. A metallurgically bonded interface with
a 50–80 lm inter-diffusion region is formed. The interfacial bonding mechanism, which associates with
Keywords:
intense Marangoni convection at the interface, is revealed and discussed.
Selective laser melting
Powder technology
Ó 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
FGM
Tungsten
Nuclear materials
W-Cu

1. Introduction
Plasma-facing components (PFC), which are indispensable to
fusion reactors such as the ITER and DEMO, consist of plasma fac-
ing materials (PFM) and heat sink materials [1]. Tungsten-copper
(W-Cu) functionally graded material (FGM) is a typical and
widely-used PFC, since W is a promising PFM material due to its
inherent high melting temperature, low erosion rate under plasma
loading, limited tritium retention, etc. [2,3]; and copper is an ideal
heat-sink material due to the high thermal conductivity. However,
the inherently large differences of physical and chemical character-
istics between W and Cu make W-Cu FGM difficult to be processed
by traditional fabrication techniques, such as powder-
metallurgical sintering, plasma spraying, infiltration welding, etc.
[1,4,5]. For instance, the large melting point differences, mutual
insolubility and the high contact angle of these two metals lead
to difficulties in conventional sintering methods [1]. Besides,
plasma spraying of W-Cu FGM faces with the problems of limited
thickness, low interfacial bonding strength and the high porosity of
the coating [5].
Selective laser melting (SLM) additive manufacturing is capable
of melting and consolidating refractory metal powder by using a
high-energy density laser beam. Former research has proved SLM
could produce pure tungsten with a high strength and an achiev-
⇑ Corresponding authors at: School of Materials Science and Engineering, South
China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510640, China.
E-mail addresses: tclscut@163.com (C. Tan), kszhou2004@163.com (K. Zhou).
able relative density of 98.5% [3]. Besides, high production flexibil-
ity of SLM, derived from incremental layer-wise deposition
manner, provides unique advantages of producing complex-
shaped W-Cu FGM. Moreover, SLM process of FGM components
could obtain a lower interfacial residual stress and a higher bond-
ing strength than laser/arc welding [6]. However, there are also
some intractable issues in SLM W-Cu FGM, which originate from
the mutual effects between matter and laser:
(i) SLM of pure W encounters many intractable defects such as
balling, cracking and lack of fusion, which associate with the
intrinsic high surface tension and viscosity, high brittleness
and oxidation sensitivity, high melting point and thermal
conductivity of W, respectively[3,7].
(ii) The high thermal conductivity and low laser energy absorp-
tion (<5%) of bulk Cu cut down the temperature of melt pool
rapidly, which makes the high melting point W hard to be
melted and deposited on the Cu.
(iii) No intermetallic phase alongside with mutual insolubility
between W and Cu, suggesting a limited bonding strength.
Worsely, significant different thermal expansion coefficients
and rapid cooling rate could cause large misfit strain and
residual stress at the interface, which further impair the
interfacial bonding.
In this work, a W-Cu FGM was firstly produced by SLM based
hybrid manufacture. The effects of laser parameter on the interfa-
cial defects, microstructure and bonding strength, were discussed.
Moreover, interfacial bonding mechanism was also elucidated.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matlet.2018.11.127
0167-577X/Ó 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
 C. Tan et al. / Materials Letters 237 (2019) 328–331
2. Experimental details
A plasma spheroidized pure tungsten powder (mean diameter,
17 lm) supplied by Tekna Advanced Materials Inc. was used for
SLM processes. The experiments were fulfilled in an EOS M290
SLM system. As illustrated in Fig. 1a, a computer numerical control
machined bulk T2 copper was sand-blasted and fixed on the sub-
strate, and then the tungsten powder was deposited on Cu by
SLM. Based on our former work about parameters optimisation
in SLM pure tungsten [3], four linear energies (g, defined as
g = laser power/scan speed), were assigned for the SLM processes
including 0.50 J/mm (g1), 0.68 J/mm (g2), 0.75 J/mm (g3) and
1.25 J/mm (g4). A layer thickness of 20 lm was selected, and the
laser scanned in a zigzag raster pattern with 67° inter-layer
rotation.
The interfacial defects and microstructures were observed by a
Zeiss Merlin field emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM).
The interfacial electron back-scattered diffraction (EBSD) test was
carried out through an EDAX Hikari EBSD detector on an FEI Nova
NanoSEM 450 SEM system, using a step size of 0.8 lm at 20 kV.
Phase compositions were detected by X-ray diffraction (XRD) in a
Bruker D8 advance diffractometer system using a Cu Ka radiation
(0.15418 nm) operated at 40 kV and 40 mA with a step size of
0.02°. The flexural specimen, with Cu-W interface in the central
X-Z plane, was 3
4
25 mm in size after grinding. The flexural
tests were carried out on a CMT4204 universal material testing
machine using a loading speed of 0.25 mm/min.
3. Results and discussion
Fig. 1b-e reveals the effect of g on the interfacial defects of the
SLM-produced W-Cu FGM samples. The large irregular-shaped
pores within some un-melted powder particles in the g1 sample
(Fig. 1b) are typical characters of lacking fusion due to insufficient
energy input, which could be caused by low laser energy absorp-
tion and rapid heat dissipation of underlying Cu. In contrast, pores
in Fig. 1c-e are reduced owing to the increased g. The g2 and g4
samples exhibit fewer pore defects, but the cracks seem to be more
pronounced. The cracks origin from two aspects: first, residual
Fig. 1. (a) Schematic diagram of SLM manufacture of W-Cu FGM; (b)-(e) interfacial SEM observations of different g processed W-Cu FGM samples.
329
stresses accumulated from SLM processes which follow the ther-
mal gradient mechanism [8]. Second, the significant differences
of thermal expansion coefficient and thermal conductivity
between Cu and W inevitably caused large misfit strain and resid-
ual stresses in the interface, which also leads to solidification
cracks [3].
Interfacial EBSD analysis of the g2 specimen is provided in
Fig. 2. The inverse pole figure reveals a columnar W structures with
random orientation in Fig. 2a. The small maximum intensity value
(about 3.1) of the corresponding pole figures (PF) in Fig. 2b also
demonstrated an absence of strong textures. Besides, the highest
intensity planes in these three PFs are different, the highest inten-
sity in {0 0 1} PF is close to h0 1 1i directions, while it in {1 1 1} and
{1 1 0} PFs are close to h0 0 1i directions, which indicates a random
crystallographic orientation was detected. Normally, the h1 0 0i
crystallographic orientation is the preferable crystallisation direc-
tion for cubic crystal alloys during a laser melt pool solidification
[9]. The non-textured microstructures are presumably caused by
the 67° rotations among layers, which suppressed temperature
gradient and undercooling degree by altering of heat flux direction
[10]. The grain boundary map Fig. 2c reveals a gradient size distri-
bution of tungsten grains at the interface. Fine grains at the bond-
ing region could be incited by the high thermal conductive Cu
(401 Wm1 k1). The effect of Cu was gradually reduced with lay-
ers increase, so larger W grains were present above the bonding
region. The W grains with 2–5° boundary angle distribute mainly
at the interface, while the high-angle grain boundaries (HAGBs,
15°) are more predominant (about 73% in fraction) in the whole
W. HAGBs are more disordered, with large misfit areas and high
density of dislocations, which could be caused by high interfacial
residual stress due to the high cooling rate and significant differ-
ences of thermal expansion coefficients (a, aCu  4aW). The grain
size distribution of W accounted from Fig. 2c is outlined in
Fig. 2d, the average grain size is about 14 lm, which is much smal-
ler than grains of commercial pure W (about 40 lm)[11], and tra-
ditionally CVD deposited W (up to 50 lm) on Cu [12].
Fig. 3a shows the XRD analyses of initial W powder, bulk Cu and
the W-Cu FGM interface, which reveals no intermetallic phase
exists between W and Cu. Interestingly, an interfacial W-Cu
330 C. Tan et al. / Materials Letters 237 (2019) 328–331

Fig. 2. Interfacial EBSD analysis of SLM-produced g2 specimen: (a) Color inverse pole figure showing grain orientation distributions, (b) pole figure showing random texture,
(c) grain boundary map, and (d) grain size distributions of tungsten. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web
version of this article.)

Fig. 3. (a) XRD patterns taken from tungsten powder, bulk Cu and W-Cu interface, (b) SEM morphology showing an inter-diffusion W-Cu interface, and (c) schematics of W-
Cu interfacial bonding mechanism.

bonding with the inter-diffusion region of 50–80 lm is present in effect, which causes mass transfer between two fluids interface
Fig. 3b, which probably accounts for the bonding between W and due to the surface tension (r) gradient. Increasing of r or/and
Cu. This inter-diffusion region is likely caused by the Marangoni temperature gradient (DT) can enhance the thermal Marangoni
 C. Tan et al. / Materials Letters 237 (2019) 328–331
Fig. 4. (a) Flexural stress-strain curves, and (d) lateral view of W-Cu samples after fracture.
convection DM [13]. As illustrated in Fig. 3c, the temperature of the
central melt pool (A) is higher than the boundaries (B and C), i.e.,
TA > TB and TA > TC, then rA < rB and rA < rC. A high r liquid pulls
on the surrounding liquid more strongly than one with a lower r.
In this case, the gradient surface tension caused the liquid to flow
away from the central melt pool to the boundary [14]. Besides, the
DT of melt pool was enhanced by the underlying high thermal con-
ductive copper, so the Marangoni convection at the W-Cu interface
would be more intense [6]. The sunken spherical W particles into
the Cu are caused by gravity. Because, on the basis of a large gap
(2337 °C) of melting point between Cu and W, the underlying Cu
could be preferentially melted as a liquid by the laser penetration
and the rapid heat dissipation from the W melt pool. So none fully
melted heavy W particles fell into the liquid Cu under gravity.
Consequently, a high thickness W-Cu composite bonding region
was achieved.
A three-point bending test was adopted to test the mechanical
properties, as well as to evaluate the bonding strength, since shear
stress presents at the W-Cu interface during bending owing to
the pronounced differences in plasticity and Young’s modulus
(E, EW  5ECu). The results of bending tests in Fig. 4a prove that
the g1 specimen has the lowest flexural strength, and the corre-
sponding fracture view in Fig. 4b shows interfacial delamination
caused by shear stress. In contrast, the g2 specimen achieves the
highest flexural strength, of which the yield strength is much
higher than that of pure Cu. The lateral fracture morphology in
Fig. 4b shows cracks in the W side owing to stress concentrations
at the bending center and the lower deformability of W than Cu.
Notably, the g3 specimen has more serious cracks than g2 and
g4 specimens as more defects in the g3 specimen (see Fig. 1) pro-
vided more sources for cracks generating. In addition to g1 speci-
men, no interfacial delamination is observed in other specimens.
The flexural performance agrees with the interfacial defects exhib-
ited in Fig. 1. Presumably, the g2 parameter obtained the highest
bonding strength, while the g1 parameter has an inferior bonding
condition due to plenty of interfacial pores.
331
4. Conclusions
In summary, a W-Cu FGM was fulfilled based on SLM additive
manufacture. Irregular-shaped pores and cracks were the main
defects at the interface due to the intrinsic properties of materials.
The SLM produced W had 14 lm average sized columnar struc-
tures with random orientation. The W-Cu composite bonding
region reached up to 80 lm owing to the intense Marangoni con-
vection at the interface enhanced by the high thermal conductive
Cu. Both the interfacial microstructures and flexural tests revealed
that the 0.68 J/mm parameter was superior to others. This work
suggested novel approaches to produce refractory metals and its
FGM by SLM additive manufacture or SLM based hybrid processes.
Acknowledgements
This work was financially supported by Guangdong Academy of
Science Projects (2018GDASCX-0402, 2017GDASCX-0202,
2017GDASCX-0111, 2018GDASCX-0111).
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