Pure copper is an excellent electrical conductor but it is not particularly hard and it softens easily at elevated temperatures. Attempts to increase the hardness and softening temperature by alloying tend to reduce the conductivity severely.

Adding a small amount of zirconium into copper raises the softening temperature dramactically and also the strength of copper is improved. Zirconium content of 0.15 per cent increases the softening temperature by as much as 300 °C while the effect on the electrical conductivity is not significant.

Advantages

Zirconium copper has inherited many good characteristics for the Oxygen Free High Conductivity Copper. One such property is the immunity to hydrogen embrittlement. Zirconium copper can be brazed in a reducing atmosphere without dimensional changes or getting internal porosity.

Zirconium copper can also be easily welded and it is well suited for electron beam welding.

This copper quality is relatively good for cold forming operations.

Manufacture

Outokumpu's zirconium copper Zrk015 is based on our Oxygen Free Conductivity copper. This is an essential benefit and helps obtaining the maximum material properties because zirconium is a very reactive metal and has the tendency to react with any elements present, such as oxygen in a commercial copper or phoshorus which is often used to deoxidise oxygen containing copper.

Equally important is the right manufacturing of this material.

All precipitation hardening metals require a good knowledge in the material behaviour to obtain optimised properties in the final product. We have developed our manufacturing process to produce material with fine grain size and good combination of strength, conductivity and temperature.

There is also a trade-off between different properties. Thermo-mechanical treatments can be to some extent modified to tailor the combination of properties to meet the need of our customer.

Applications

Zirconium copper is the material for:

• Power semiconductor bases tubes
• Connectors
• Lead frames
• Spot welding electrodes and wheels
• Spot welding adaptor shanks
• MIG/MAG welding contact tips
• Commutator bars
• Continuous casting molds

Products

We produce a full range of zirconium copper products including rods, bars, tubes, shapes, sheets, strips and bars. Apart from these standard products we also supply zirconium copper molds for continuous casting and spot welding electrodes.

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