Aluminium oxide

About: Aluminium oxide is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 4710 publications have been published within this topic receiving 54153 citations. The topic is also known as: Abramant & Abramax.

Influence of organic matter on phosphate adsorption by aluminium and iron oxides in sandy soils

Abstract: SUMMARY The phosphate adsorption capacity (Pmax) of samples from various horizons of five Danish podzolized soils were investigated before and after organic matter removal. Removal of organic matter had no direct influence on Pmax suggesting that organic matter did not compete with phosphate for adsorption sites. In the soils investigated aluminium and iron oxides were the main phosphate adsorbents. Thus, more than 96% of the variation in Pmax could be accounted for by poorly crystalline aluminium and iron oxides (extractable by oxalate) and by well-crystallized iron oxides (taken as the difference between dithionite-citrate-bicarbonate-extractable iron and oxalate-extractable iron). Organic matter affected phosphate adsorption indirectly by inhibiting aluminium oxide crystallization. The resulting poorly crystalline oxides had high Pmax. In contrast, the influence of organic matter on the crystallinity of the iron oxides, and therefore on their capacity to adsorb phosphate, seemed limited.

Thickness effects on the mechanical properties of micro-arc discharge oxide coatings on aluminium alloys

Abstract: Weight-saving materials are becoming increasingly important, especially in the automotive and aerospace industries. Design engineers would thus like to make more extensive use of light metals such as aluminium, titanium, magnesium and their alloys; however, these materials tend to have poor wear resistance. Previous treatments and coatings applied to aluminium alloys, for example by traditional processes such as hard anodising and thermal spraying, have suffered from the low load support from the underlying material and/or insufficient adhesion, which reduces their durability. Also, although TiN-, CrN- or DLC-coated aluminium alloys (using various PVD methods) can achieve a high surface hardness, in practice they often exhibit poor performance under mechanical loading, since the coatings are usually too thin to protect the substrate from the contact conditions. In the work reported here, a plasma electrolysis technique known as micro-arc discharge oxidation (MDO) was investigated; thick and hard oxide ceramic layers were fabricated on BS Al-6082 aluminium alloy by this method. The phase composition and microstructure of the MDO coatings were investigated by XRD, SEM and EDX analyses. A number of adhesion and tribological sliding and impact wear tests were also performed. It was found that Al–Si–O coatings with a hardness of up to 2400 HV and with excellent wear resistance and load support could be formed. The thickness of the coatings significantly influenced the mechanical properties. In terms of tribological performance, the thicker coatings performed best in sliding, scratch and impact tests whilst thin coatings were also surprisingly effective in both impact and low-load sliding. Coatings of intermediate thickness provided relatively poor performance in all tribological tests.

Sintered alumina with low dielectric loss

Abstract: Low dielectric loss materials are required for applications in radio‐frequency and microwave communications. Aluminium is the second most abundant element in the Earth’s crust and aluminium oxide (alumina) is one of the commonest ceramics. Single crystals of aluminium oxide, i.e., sapphire, possess one of the lowest dielectric losses of any material. Polycrystalline alumina has a higher loss due to extrinsic factors. The dielectric loss of sintered alumina is studied in an attempt to determine the causes of extrinsic loss. Impurities are shown to play an important role, but the microstructure also is a key factor. High‐purity aluminas, sintered to near theoretical density, are found to display very low loss, tan δ=2.7×10−5 at 10 GHz. Doping alumina with titanium dioxide was found to reduce the tan δ=2×10−5.