Method for producing nickel alloy porous body

Abstract

A method for producing a nickel alloy porous body includes a step of applying a coating material that contains a nickel alloy powder of nickel and an added metal, the nickel alloy powder having a volume-average particle size of 10 μm or less, onto a surface of a skeleton of a resin formed body having a three-dimensional mesh-like structure; a step of plating with nickel the surface of the skeleton of the resin formed body onto which the coating material has been applied; a step of removing the resin formed body; and a step of diffusing the added metal into the nickel by a heat treatment.

Description

TECHNICAL FIELD[0001]The present invention relates to a method for producing a nickel alloy porous body that is usable, for example, as a current collector for a battery, filter, or catalyst carrier, that is excellent in terms of strength and toughness, and that is produced at a low cost and from a wide range of materials.BACKGROUND ART[0002]Porous metal bodies have been used in various applications, such as current collectors for batteries, filters, and catalyst carriers. Accordingly, there are many known documents regarding production techniques for porous metal bodies, as described below.[0003]Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 7-150270 (PTL 1) proposes a porous metal body having high strength, which is obtained by applying a coating material containing reinforcing fine particles of an oxide, carbide, or nitride of an element selected from Groups II to VI of the periodic table onto a surface of a skeleton of a three-dimensional mesh-like resin having interconn...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The invention provides a way to make a porous body out of a nickel alloy. It allows for easy control of the metal concentration and ensures that the added metal is evenly distributed throughout the porous body.

Problems solved by technology

The porous metal body is vulnerable to processing that involves plastic deformation, such as bending or pressing, and breaks when subjected to such processing, which is a problem.

However, in the porous metal body produced by the sintering process, since the skeleton is formed by sintering between metal or metal oxide powder particles, even if the powder particle size is decreased, voids occur in considerable numbers in the skeleton in cross section.

As a result, even when a body having high breaking strength is obtained by designing a single metal or alloy species, since the elongation at break is low, the body is vulnerable to processing that involves plastic deformation, such as bending or pressing, and breaks when subjected to such processing, which is a problem, as in the case described above.

However, the low productivity of the diffusion coating process results in a high cost, and the element capable of forming an alloy with the Ni porous body is limited to Cr and Al, all of which are problems.

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