Study on influencing factors and mechanism of high-quality tungsten carbide nanopowders synthesized via carbothermal reduction

摘要

In this study, high-quality WC powders with 100 nm were synthesized using a simple and efficient carbothermal reduction method. The effects of carbon source and temperature on the synthesis process, nucleation and growth mechanism of WC nanopowders were investigated in detailed. The results show that acetylene black with small particle size and good dispersion is the optimal carbon source to prepare WC nanopowders. The uniform precursor synthesized by acetylene black can significantly increase the contact probability of WO3 and C particles, greatly reduce the activation energy, and effectively improve the reaction efficiency during subsequent carbothermal reduction process. Moreover, the formation temperatures of WC are reduced to 1000 degrees C compared with other three carbon source. Further increasing carbothermal reduction temperature can provide the driving force of diffusing atoms, which promotes the carbothermal reduction reaction, but also significantly increases the diffusion rate of grain boundary resulting in rapid grain growth. (C) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.