Investigation of Optimal Milling Conditions in the Production of Mg-3Zn-1Mn Nanocomposite

One approach for the preparation of Mg-3Zn-1Mn nanobiocomposite is powder metallurgy. After preparing the alloy by the milling process, hardening is conducted during the sintering process. The condition for obtaining high strength and corrosion resistance of as-sintered specimens is the uniform distribution of zinc and manganese elements in the magnesium matrix and the maximum particle size reduction to increase the surface area. In this research, under certain conditions, the milling process has been conducted to fabricate this nanocomposite. The result of XRD analysis exhibited that the optimal sample is obtained after 25 h milling. At this time, the grain size was 27 μm, and the crystallite size was 24 nm. Evaluation of X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray fluorescence (XRF), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) results for samples shows uniform distribution of zinc and manganese particles in the matrix of magnesium and confirms the reduction of particle size with spherical shape for nanobiocomposite specimens.