1 2 ORIGINAL ARTICLE 3 Synthesis and structural evolution of vanadium carbide 4 in nano scale during mechanical alloying Q1 5 Mohsen Hossein-Zadeh a Q2 , Mansour Razavi b, * , Mohsen Safa a , Amin Abdollahi c , 6 Omid Mirzaee a 7 a Department of Materials Engineering, Semnan University, Semnan, Iran 8 b Materials and Energy Research Center, Tehran, Iran 9 c Department of Metallurgical Engineering, Azad University, Ahvaz, Iran 10 Received 14 December 2013; accepted 30 March 2014 11 13 KEYWORDS 14 15 Milling; 16 Nanocrystalline; 17 V 8 C 7 ; 18 Microwave; 19 Carbide; 20 XRD Abstract In this study, nano crystalline vanadium carbide was synthesized by mechanical alloying method. V 2 O 5 , C and Mg powders were placed in a planetary ball mill and sampled after different milling times. XRD and FESEM were used for characterization of synthesized powder. Studies showed that crystalline V 8 C 7 has been synthesized by 24 h milling and subsequently heat treatment at 800 °C. It was concluded that the V 8 C 7 crystallites were nano sized and the lattice parameter deviated slightly from the standard size. Furthermore, milling led to increase in strain and decrease of vanadium carbide particle size. ª 2014 Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of King Saud University. 21 22 1. Introduction 23 The transition metal carbides have very high melting points, 24 hardness and high temperature strength. These materials also 25 exhibit good electrical and thermal conductivities. Among 26 them vanadium carbide is the most attractive because of its 27 many excellent physical and mechanical properties such as 28 high hardness, excellent wear resistance, good corrosion resis- 29 tance, excellent high temperature strength, high chemical and 30 thermal stability even at high temperatures. It is commercially 31 used in tool bits and cutting tools (Mahajan et al., 2013; 32 Kurlov et al., 2013; Ye et al., 2009; Chen et al., 2011; Oelerich 33 et al., 2001). 34 Presently, various methods for synthesizing vanadium car- 35 bide powders have been investigated including direct element 36 reaction (Schwarzkopf and Kieffer, 1953), mechanical alloying 37 (Dai et al., 2012), temperature programmed reaction (Lin et al., 38 2012), gas reduction-carburization (Mahajan et al., 2012; Zheng 39 et al., 2012). Mechanical alloying (MA) as production process 40 in cemented carbides has attracted many interests due to its 41 capability of producing nano-crystalline powders prior to sin- 42 tering (Dai et al., 2012; Zheng et al., 2012). This method has a 43 number of potential advantages. MA process is simple, cheap 44 and can be performed at ambient temperature. Mechanical 45 alloying (MA) is a popular method to fabricate materials with 46 novel structures and/or properties (Suryanarayana, 2001; 47 Hoseinpur et al., 2013; El-Eskandarany, 2001). * Corresponding author. Tel.: +98 261 6204131; fax: +98 261 6201888. E-mail addresses: m-razavi@merc.ac.ir, m7816006@yahoo.com (M. Razavi). Peer review under responsibility of King Saud University. Production and hosting by Elsevier Journal of King Saud University – Engineering Sciences (2014) xxx, xxx–xxx King Saud University Journal of King Saud University – Engineering Sciences www.ksu.edu.sa www.sciencedirect.com 1018-3639 ª 2014 Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of King Saud University. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jksues.2014.03.010 JKSUES 133 No. of Pages 6 9 April 2014 Please cite this article in press as: Hossein-Zadeh, M. et al., Synthesis and structural evolution of vanadium carbide in nano scale during mechan- ical alloying Q1 . Journal of King Saud University – Engineering Sciences (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jksues.2014.03.010