The development of new alloys requires the much experimental effort, especially if multicomponent alloys are considered. The current paper describes the development of active brazing alloys for metal-ceramic joining that are based on binary eutectic Ni-Ta or Ni-Nb alloys. However, different metal bases (steel, Ni-Base, Co-base alloys) require an adaption of the simple eutectic compositions in order to avoid the formation of brittle intermetallic phases such as Laves or µ-Phase.
A high throughput calculation approach was chosen to find suitable alloy compositions. Thousands of single equilibrium calculations were run by a TC-Phyton script that delivered solidus and liquidus temperature as well as the primary and secondary recrystallizing phases. The calculations were evaluated according to specific selection criteria such as a minimization of the liquidus temperature, a certain melting range and the avoidance of brittle intermetallic phases. The evaluation was performed by multivariate data analysis with the software SIMCA® by Sartorius.
Selected alloys were finally prepared by vacuum arc melting. The melting range was determined by DTA and DSC measurement and correlated to the simulation results. The resulting microstructure after DTA was investigated by SEM/EDX on metallographic samples. The next step is the selection of promising alloys for wettability testing and metal-ceramic brazing trials.