Int.

Journal of Refractory Metals and Hard Materials 66 (2017) 76–82

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Int. Journal of Refractory Metals and Hard Materials

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/IJRMHM

Study on behaviors of tungsten powders in radio frequency

thermal plasma
Hailong Zhu a,⁎, Honghui Tong b, Changming Cheng b, Ni Liu c
a
College of Physics and Electronics Engineering, Shanxi University, Taiyuan 030006, China
b
Southwestern Institute of Physics, Chengdu 610041, China
c
Institute of Theoretical Physics, Shanxi University, Taiyuan 030006, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This paper describes an investigational study of the spheroidization of refractory metal tungsten powders by
Received 5 November 2016 radio frequency thermal plasma, with emphasis on the melting, solidification and growth behavior of the tung-
Received in revised form 23 January 2017 sten powder particles during the spheroidization process. The flight time and melting time of tungsten powder
Accepted 29 January 2017
particles in the plasma were estimated, and the growth behavior of the tungsten powder particles was analyzed
Available online 24 February 2017
in detail by investigating the change in the average particle size before and after plasma spheroidization. The
Keywords:
morphology and spheroidization rate were analyzed using field emission scanning electron microscopy. The
Radio frequency thermal plasma flight time and melting time for tungsten powder particles with radius of 7.8 μm were calculated to be 9.3 ms
Spheroidization and 2.9 ms, respectively. The change in powder particle size during the process showed that the growth of tung-
Tungsten powders sten powder particles was mainly caused by the coalescence of droplets in the thermal plasma system. The exper-
DPV-2000 imental results demonstrated that the spheroidization rate can reach up to 95% under the operating conditions
used in this work.
© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
At or close to atmospheric pressure, the high-power radio frequency
(RF) thermal plasma has become effective heat and chemical reaction
sources for various material processes such as synthesis nanoparticles
[1–3], spheroidization of micron-sized powders [4–6], and preparation
of novel nano-carbon materials [7–9]. These applications are based on
the unique advantages of RF thermal plasma such as ultra-high temper-
ature (thousands of Kelvin, even up to 104 K), high chemical reactivity,
large plasma volume, high cooling rate (104–105 K/s) as well as long res-
idence/reaction time due to its comparatively low plasma velocity [10,
11]. Specifically, the RF thermal plasma can be considered an innovative
and powerful tool for spheroidization of refractory metals and ceramic
powders into spherical powders by one-step production [12].
Tungsten is one of the most useful and unique metals, with the
advantages of high melting point, high specific mass, good corrosion
resistance, and low release of gases. It has many industrial applications
and has been widely used in fields such as electronics, military, and the
nuclear industry [13–17]. In addition to the above-mentioned advan-
tages, spherical tungsten powders exhibit outstanding properties such
as excellent flowability, high bulk density, and low sintering shrinkage,
making them suitable for a broad range of applications such as thermal
⁎ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: zhuhl@sxu.edu.cn (H. Zhu).
spraying, powder metallurgy, and so on. Thermal plasma technique has
been proven as an effective technique for preparing spherical tungsten
powders because of its properties of high temperature and high
enthalpy, and it may be used in the industrial production after further
studies [18,20].
Plasma spheroidization of refractory metal tungsten powders con-
sists of two main processes: first, the raw tungsten powder injected
into the high temperature region of RF thermal plasma is heated up
and melted to form spherical droplets due to surface tension, then the
melted droplets solidify into spherical particles due to rapid quenching
when they spurt out of the plasma. The melted status of the powder par-
ticles is essential for the formation of spherical tungsten powder; how-
ever, not all powder particles can be melted completely in spite of the
plasma temperature being much higher than the melting point of tung-
sten. The reasons for this incomplete melting could be that the powder
particles cannot absorb sufficient plasma energy due to the non-uni-
form temperature inside the plasma torch, the local cooling effect of
plasma by the cold carrier gas and flow of powder particles [19], as
well as insufficient optimization of experimental parameters. Therefore,
fully understanding the melting and solidification behaviors of tungsten
particles and the influence of powder feed rate on the spheroidization
rate is very important. Recently, Jiang [20] reported that a tungsten par-
ticle with a diameter of 60 μm requires 1.4 × 10−3 J of heat energy for
complete melting. However, for a given powder feed rate of 80 g/min,
the corresponding heat energy required for completely melting all

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijrmhm.2017.01.017
0263-4368/© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 H. Zhu et al. / Int. Journal of Refractory Metals and Hard Materials 66 (2017) 76–82 77

Fig. 1. Schematic illustration of the experimental setup.

tungsten particles is about 51.6 kJ. Xiong et al. [21] presented a dimen-
sionless parameter called the melting index to describe the melting sta-
tus of powder particles, and revealed that the total melting time is
reciprocal to the particle diameter and velocity. For a given powder,
the melted status of the powder particles is determined by plasma tem-
perature and velocity, because the plasma temperature is related to the
melting time of the powder particles, and the plasma velocity deter-
mines the flight time of the powder particles. Several studies [20–23]
have shown that oxidation and crystallization behaviors of in-flight par-
ticles occur during plasma spheroidization of metal powders. For most
metal powders, it is hard to be oxidized at room temperature, but is rap-
idly oxidized at high temperature if there is a small amount of air
remaining in the chamber, or in the air thermal plasma environment.
High oxidation rate of tungsten particles occurs in the tail of the thermal
plasma under atmospheric pressure or soft vacuum condition. Besides
the melting, solidification, oxidation and crystallization behaviors, pow-
der particles also show a growth behavior rather than refinement in the
plasma spheroidization of refractory metal and ceramic powders [24,
25]. However, the growth behavior of powder particles and the related
mechanism have rarely been reported.
In the present study, an experimental process of RF thermal
spheroidization of refractory metal tungsten powders has been intro-
duced firstly. The melting behaviors of the powder particles were inves-
tigated by estimating the plasma temperature, plasma velocity, and
melting and flight times of tungsten powder particles in the plasma.
The growth behavior of the tungsten powder particles during the
spheroidization process was focused on. Finally, the spheroidization
rate and proposed parameters were discussed.
system, DPV-2000 monitoring instrument, powder reaction and collec-
tion chamber, and exhaust system. The schematic illustration of the
setup is shown in Fig. 1.
In a typical experimental procedure, a soft vacuum of approximately
40 kPa was created by the vacuum pump and a plasma-forming gas
(argon) was injected into the plasma torch at 25 slpm before the igni-
tion of the plasma. The power was gradually increased, and a spark dis-
charge was generated due to the direct electrostatic field generated by
the coils. Following the ignition, the power and gas flow including plas-
ma-forming and protective sheath gases were increased gradually to
maintain a stable plasma. Then, the raw tungsten powder particles
were carried by the carrier gas (argon) to a powder injection probe
inserted into the plasma high temperature region. The injected tungsten
powder was melted in the plasma high temperature region and solidi-
fied into spherical particles at the exit of the plasma. A DPV-2000 mon-
itoring instrument (TECNAR Automation, St-Bruno, QC, Canada) fixed at
the end of the plasma flame (at 80 mm down the spout of plasma torch)
was employed for monitoring the in-flight particle temperature, veloc-
ity, size and the average values of these parameters. Finally, the
spheroidized powder particles were collected at the collection point.

2. Experimental setup and methodology

The experimental apparatus used in this work is a 100 kW RF ther-

mal induction plasma system. This system consists of RF power supply,
homemade water-cooled RF plasma torch, powder feeder, gas supply

Table 1
Experimental conditions for spheroidization of tungsten powder.

Parameters Values

Chamber pressure (kPa) 40

Induction frequency (MHz) 3
Plate power (kW) 60
Plasma-forming gas (slpm) 40
Protective sheath gas (slpm) 60
Powder carrier gas (slpm) 3
Mean diameter of powder (μm) 15.6
Powder feed rate (g min−1) 10–120
Fig. 2. The typical plasma temperature and velocity distribution.
78 H. Zhu et al. / Int. Journal of Refractory Metals and Hard Materials 66 (2017) 76–82
Fig. 3. DPV-2000 measurement results (a) particle temperature, (b) particle velocity and
(c) particle size.
The detailed operation parameters of the RF thermal plasma system are
given in Table 1.
Field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM, Model S-
4800, Hitachi, Tokyo, Japan) was used to characterize the morphologies
of the samples before and after the spheroidization. The particle size dis-
tribution of tungsten powders was measured with a wet laser particle
size analyzer (Winner2005A, Jinan, China) in the liquid phase (water
was used as the dispersant medium). The apparent density of the sam-
ples was determined by the standard cup and funnel method, and the
tap density of the samples was measured by Tap Density Tester (FT-
100A, Ningbo, China). The flowability of the samples was investigated
using a calibrated funnel (the Hall flowmeter). Porosity measurement
of the samples was conducted on a Micromeritics Accelerated Surface
Area Porosimetry (ASAP 2020) analyzer by determining their
Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) specific surface areas.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Plasma temperature and velocity
Plasma temperature and velocity are very important parameters
which are closely related to the melting and solidification process of
raw powders in the plasma. So, in this paper, the plasma temperature
and velocity distribution under the experimental operating parameters
were calculated using the method reported in a previous work [27]. The
calculated results are shown in Fig. 2. It can be seen in Fig. 2(a) that the
maximum temperature of the plasma is 8573 K, located near the quartz
wall covered with the coil rather than at the centerline of the torch. The
temperature of the center region is about 1000 K lower than the maxi-
mum temperature, but much higher than the melting point of tungsten
powder (3693 K) [28]. The plasma temperature decreases rapidly along
the axial direction up to the plasma plume tail where the temperature is
reduced to around 3500 K. The average plasma temperature is estimat-
ed to be about 6000 K. In this work, the temperature range between
3693 K and 8573 K is defined as the plasma high temperature region.
The tungsten powder particles are melted to form droplets through rap-
idly absorbed plasma energy, and they travel about 180 mm in length in
the high temperature region. Once these molten droplets fly out of the
plasma high temperature region, they are quickly solidified in the
region where the temperature is kept below the melting point of tung-
sten powder. This region is defined as the cooling region in this work.
Fig. 2(b) shows that the maximum velocity of the plasma is distributed
along the downward axis of the coil coverage area, and its value is up to
about 24 m/s, while the plasma average velocity is estimated to be about
20 m/s.
3.2. Estimation of flight time and melting time of tungsten powder
The flight time of powder particles in plasma high temperature
region directly affects the heating and melting processes of tungsten
powder particles, and it is one of the most important parameters affect-
ing the spheroidization rate of powder particles. The flight time can be
calculated from the below expression [29]:
sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
2SR2 ρ
τf ¼
4:5V pl ηpl
where,Randρare the radius and density of raw powder particles, respec-
tively, ηplandVplare the viscosity and average velocity of the plasma,
respectively, andSis the length of flight path of the powder particles in
the plasma high temperature region. For Ar plasma and tungsten pow-
der particles in this work, R = 7.8 μm, ρ = 19.3 kg/m3, ηpl =
2.78 × 10−4 kg/m s, Vpl = 20 m/s, and S = 180 mm, as shown in Fig.
2(a). The flight time for tungsten powder with radius of 7.8 μm is esti-
mated to be 9.3 ms.
As mentioned above, once the tungsten powder particles are
injected into the plasma high temperature region, their surfaces are
heated up rapidly and reach the melting point in a short time (approx-
imately 0.1 ms) [34]. This heating time is negligible compared to the
melting time required for dissipation of the latent heat from the particle
surface to the center of the particle. According to the literature [21], the
melting time can be calculated using the below formula:
Þ kðT plρL
2
τm ¼ R6 ð1 þ hR
2k
−T m Þ
,where,his the heat transfer coefficient, Tplis
the average temperature of the plasma, Tmis the melting temperature,
Lis the latent heat of fusion, and kis the thermal conductivity of tungsten
powder. The melting time for tungsten powder particles with radius of
7.8 μm is estimated to be 2.9 ms. In this calculation, h = 1500 W/m2 K,
k = 180 W/m K, L = 1.84 × 105 J/kg, and Tpl − Tm = 2000 K, according to
literature values [30,21].
The calculated results show that the flight time of tungsten powder
particles is greater than the melting time, indicating that there is
 H. Zhu et al. / Int. Journal of Refractory Metals and Hard Materials 66 (2017) 76–82
Fig. 4. FE-SEM images: (a) raw powder, (b) spheroidized powder.
enough time for the tungsten powder particles to melt. Increasing the
plasma temperature and reducing the plasma velocity as much as pos-
sible would be beneficial to ensure complete melting of the tungsten
powder particles.
3.3. Experimental results of the temperature, velocity and size distribution
of the in-flight particles
Fig. 3 shows the results of the temperature, velocity and size distri-
bution of the tungsten powder particles at the flame tail measured by
DPV-2000. It can be seen from Fig. 3(a) that the average temperature
of all the monitored particles is 3032 °C (3035 K) lower than the melting
point of tungsten powders, and the typical standard deviation of the
particle temperature is about 182 °C. This result indicates that the mol-
ten droplets flowed out of the plasma high temperature zone and the
surface of the droplets began to solidify at the flame tail. Fig. 3(b)
shows that the average velocity of the particles at flame tail is 25 ±
5.1 m/s, which is approximately equal to the velocity of the plasma.
Compared to the DC arc thermal plasma, the lower velocity of RF ther-
mal plasma is beneficial for the spheroidization of powder particles,
because low velocity leads to longer flight time in plasma high temper-
ature region. Nevertheless, Fig. 3(b) indicates that the powder particles
undergo some acceleration in the plasma. The initial velocity of the
powder particles is controlled by the propulsion force of the carrier
gas and it is about 5.3 m/s. At the flame tail, the powder particles are
accelerated close to 25 m/s by the drag force of plasma and their own
Fig. 5. Effect of feed rate on the spheroidization rate of tungsten powder.
79
gravity. The particle size distribution at the point of measurement is in
the range of 5–47 μm, and the average particle size is about 20 μm (in
Fig. 3(c)). Compared to the raw powder, the particles display a growth
behavior during spheroidization process. The detailed discussion on
the change in particle size is given in Section 3.4.
3.4. Characterization of tungsten powder particles and spheroidization rate
The FE-SEM image in Fig. 4(a) shows the morphology of raw tung-
sten powder, and it can be seen that the raw powder particles are irreg-
ular. After being processed by plasma, spherical tungsten particles are
formed and the corresponding FE-SEM image is shown in Fig. 4(b).
The prepared tungsten powder particles present an excellent spherical
degree and spheroidization rate close to 95%. This result indicates that
the raw tungsten powder particles are melted almost completely
through absorbed plasma energy under these experimental conditions.
The spheroidization rate is an important parameter for the plasma
spheroidization of powders. In this work, the spheroidization rate of
the tungsten powders was obtained from the FE-SEM images using
the following method. The total number of tungsten powder particles
counted in ten different FE-SEM images is A, and the number of spher-
ical particles in those images is B. Then the spheroidization rate, η, is
Fig. 6. Variation of the apparent density, tap density and powder flowability with
spheroidization rate of tungsten powder.
80 H. Zhu et al. / Int. Journal of Refractory Metals and Hard Materials 66 (2017) 76–82
Fig. 7. The size distributions of tungsten powders before and after the plasma
spheroidization.
calculated using the following equation [32,33].
B
η¼  100%
A
As tungsten powder has the highest melting temperature among all
metals, it is extremely difficult to achieve a 100% spheroidization rate.
The main factors influencing the spheroidization rate of tungsten pow-
ders include plasma power, powder feed rate, gas flow rate and cham-
ber pressure, of which the feed rate is the most decisive one. Fig. 5
shows the variation in the spheroidization rate with the feed rate. It
can be seen that the spheroidization rate increased with decreasing
feed rate, and reached up to 95% when the feed rate was reduced to
20 g/min. When the powder feed rate was low, more heat was absorbed
by the powder particles. As a result, the powder particles were melted
more efficiently, and there was an increase in the spheroidization rate.
However, the low feed rate is extremely unfavorable for the yield rate
of spherical tungsten powder. To achieve an optimum balance between
the spheroidization rate and yield rate, a feed rate of 10–30 g/min was
selected as the appropriate level.
Fig. 6 shows the variation of the apparent density, tap density and
powder flowability with spheroidization rate of tungsten powders. It
can be seen that the raw powder particles have lower apparent density
and tap density values of 6.5 and 11.2 g·cm−3, respectively. The higher
the spheroidization rate, the higher the apparent density and tap densi-
ty of tungsten powders. When the spheroidization rate is 100%, these
two values are up to 9.8 and 13.85 g·cm−3, respectively. After plasma
spheroidization, the apparent density and tap density of the tungsten
powders were greatly improved, and the powder flowability of the
spheroidized powder was also better than that of the raw powder. In
addition, internal porosity of the spheroidized powder particles was
measured by determining their BET specific surface areas. The porosity
Table 2
Particle size distribution of the tungsten powders before and after the spheroidization.
Size (μm) Raw powder In-flight particles Spheroidized powder
D5 5.78 / 4.52
D10 7.09 / 7.11
D50 15.60 20 28.79
D90 29.02 / 68.02
analysis indicated that the samples were nonporous since the character-
istic hysteresis loop was absent in the adsorption–desorption isotherms.
3.5. Analysis of growth behavior of the tungsten powder particles
To investigate the change in particle size during the plasma
spheroidization of tungsten powders, the particle size distributions of
raw and spheroidized powders were analyzed using a laser particle
size analyzer. The d50 value was used to denote the average particle
size, in the same way as the previous work [26]. The size distribution
of in-flight particles was measured by DPV-2000 (as shown in Fig.
3(c)). A diagram comparing the size distributions of the tungsten pow-
ders before and after the spheroidization is shown in Fig. 7. It is clear
that the plasma process has a significant impact on the particle size dis-
tribution. The size distributions (D5, D10, D50, D90) of the tungsten pow-
ders before and after plasma spheroidization are shown in Table 2. The
powder particle size increased and the size distribution was broadened
by the plasma spheroidization. Fig. 7 reveals a bimodal particle size dis-
tribution for the raw powder particles, due to irregular surface morphol-
ogy and the asymmetrical nature of the powder. These results are
consistent with the SEM morphology (Fig. 4(a)), and the average size
of the irregular raw tungsten powder particles is 15.60 μm. When the
raw powder enters the plasma high temperature region, the in-flight
particles are heated rapidly and their surface begins to melt and partial-
ly evaporate (for small particles) due to the high plasma temperature.
Moreover, the in-flight particles can collide with each other due to the
complex flow behavior in the RF thermal plasma, which results in coa-
lescence between droplets (in Fig. 8). Measurement results of DPV-
2000 at the plasma flame tail position indicate that the size of the in-
flight particles is mainly distributed between 5–47 μm, and the average
size is about 20 μm. After passing the high temperature region, the mol-
ten droplets are rapidly solidified into spheroidized particles due to the
surface-tension effect. At this time, the ultrafine particles would adhere
to the surface of the larger particles due to the size effect and van der
Waal's forces, resulting in the formation of much larger particles (as
shown in Fig. 9). This adhesion growth is more obvious especially
when the particles drop onto the collecting tray, which causes the par-
ticle size distribution to become wide. Therefore, in our opinion, the
growth behavior of tungsten powder particles is mainly dominated by
coalescence and adhesion of particles. The particle size distribution
results of the prepared spherical tungsten powder shows that the max-
imum particle size after plasma spheroidization is up to 93.30 μm, and
the average size is about 28.79 μm. The particle size of the tungsten
powder increased dramatically after plasma spheroidization, which is
contrary to our expectation that the powder particles would become
finer after plasma spheroidization.
Fig. 10 shows the change in the average particle size in the plasma
high temperature region and cooling region along the axis position. As
mentioned before, the tungsten powder particles display growth behav-
ior in both the plasma high temperature region and the cooling region.
However, the tungsten powder particles have a higher growth rate in
the cooling region. This could be because coalescence and adhesion of
the particles could occur more easily in the cooling region as the in-
flight particles have higher viscosity at the lower temperature of the
cooling region [31]. The results suggest that the desired powder particle
size can be obtained by optimizing the plasma spheroidization process
parameters.
4. Conclusions
In summary, micron-sized spherical tungsten powder particles have
been successfully prepared via a rapid melting and solidification process
in RF thermal plasma system, despite tungsten having the highest melt-
ing point among all metals. The melting, solidification and growth
behaviors of the tungsten powder particles during the spheroidization
process were investigated by estimating the flight time and melting
 H. Zhu et al. / Int. Journal of Refractory Metals and Hard Materials 66 (2017) 76–82 81

Fig. 8. The coalescence behavior of tungsten powder particles after the plasma spheroidization.

time of tungsten powder in the plasma, and monitoring the tempera-

ture, velocity and size distribution of the in-flight particles using DPV-
2000. The main conclusions from the present study may be summarized
as follows:

(1) The efficient melting of the tungsten powder particles in the plas-
ma requires the flight time to be greater than the melting time.
Under the experimental conditions in this work, the flight time
and melting time for tungsten powder particles with radius of
7.8 μm were calculated to be 9.3 ms and 2.9 ms, respectively.
These results are consistent with the experimental results and
confirm the high spheroidization rate.
(2) The tungsten powder particles show a growth behavior during
the entire flight process through the system. The coalescence of
droplets caused by collision in the thermal plasma system is

Fig. 10. The change in the average particle size along the axis of vacuum chamber.

the main contributing factor for the growth of tungsten powder

particles. In addition, the tungsten powder particles showed a
higher growth rate in the cooling region than in the plasma
high temperature region.
(3) It is feasible to obtain micron-sized spherical tungsten powder
particles within an expected size distribution and with a high
spheroidization rate by proper choice of operating parameters
in the RF thermal plasma system.

Acknowledgement

Fig. 9. The adhesion behavior of tungsten powder particles after the plasma This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation
spheroidization. of China (Nos. 11205050, 11535003, and 11404198).
82 H. Zhu et al. / Int. Journal of Refractory Metals and Hard Materials 66 (2017) 76–82
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