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Preparing an ultra-smooth TaW alloy surface with chemical mechanical polishing via controlling galvanic corrosion

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Abstract

An ultra-smooth tantalum alloy surface is essential to prepare a high-quality coating. This work employed the chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) technique to process Ta-12W alloy. The effect of H2O2 on the CMP performance was investigated. The results revealed that, as the H2O2 concentration increases at acidic pH, the material removal rate (MRR) of Ta-12W alloy gradually increases while the surface roughness sharply decreases and levels off. After adding 4 wt% H2O2, the surface roughness Sa reaches about 0.4 nm in 97.9 μm × 97.9 μm and 0.068 nm in 1 μm × 1 μm. The surface becomes ultra-smooth, and the substrate remains intact. For the CMP mechanism, adding H2O2 can promote the formation of a relatively uniform and passive film, mainly consisting of evenly distributed tantalum oxides and tungsten oxides, suppressing corrosion. Therefore, the surface quality improves. Compared with hard metallic tantalum and tungsten, their oxides can be removed readily by silica abrasive particles presumably through chemical bonds and mechanical abrasion. Hence, the MRR increases. Additionally, potassium ions may contribute to the removal of tantalum. This study provides a feasible method to attain tantalum alloys of high surface quality for coating.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful for the financial support by the National Key R&D Program of China (2020YFA0711001), National Natural Science Foundation of China (51905505, 51975488, and 51991373).

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  1. Qijian Zhao and Chuandong Tian have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Machinery Manufacturing Technology, China Academy of Engineering Physics, Mianyang, 621900, China

    Qijian Zhao & Pengfei Sun

  2. Tribology Research Institute, State Key Laboratory of Traction Power, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, 610031, China

    Chuandong Tian, Jiaxin Zheng, Liang Jiang & Linmao Qian

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Contributions

QZ: Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Writing—Original Draft, and Writing—Review & Editing; CT: Formal analysis, Investigation, and Writing—Original Draft; JZ: Formal analysis; PS: Funding acquisition; LJ: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Project administration, Resources, Supervision, and Writing—Review & Editing; LQ: Funding acquisition and Resources.

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Correspondence to Liang Jiang.

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Zhao, Q., Tian, C., Zheng, J. et al. Preparing an ultra-smooth TaW alloy surface with chemical mechanical polishing via controlling galvanic corrosion. J Appl Electrochem 54, 839–850 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10800-023-01986-w

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