Preparation of titanium-inert gas alloys by cyclic plastic deformation

Few studies have been carried out on the preparation of alloys which contain noble gas as a chemical component, because noble gases have been considered to have very weak interactions with metals. Thus, special techniques like ion implantation were required to prepare such alloys. We have found out that environmental noble gas atoms enter the reverse plastic zone of titanium during cyclic plastic deformation in noble gas environments. This phenomenon is applicable to the preparation of metal - noble gas alloys. In this study, for preparation of titanium-noble gas alloys two techniques were developed, i.e., a fatigue crack propagation technique and a ball milling technique. The ball milling technique is found to be able prepare more concentrated titanium-noble gas alloys. The magnetic susceptibilities of these alloys were measured at cryogenic temperature. It has been found that these alloys show superconductivity with a transition temperature of approximately 9K.