Effect of added Fe element on microstructure of CuCr contact materials

CuCr and CuCrFe contact materials were made by mechanically alloying, explosive compaction and sintering at low temperature. OM, SEM and TEM were used to observe their microstructure. It was studied mainly that the effect of the added Fe element on microstructure of CuCr contact materials. The results show that the effect of the added Fe is more obvious and microstructure of the CuCrFe alloys is much finer than that of CuCr alloys; a majority of Fe dissolves into Cr phase, and the added Fe does not make strain strips and dislocation vanish, on the contrary, it makes riffled dislocation appear so that conductivity of CuCr alloys is much lower.