Investigation of physical and chemical properties of scandium oxide using a thermal imaging furnace

Abstract

Properties of high melting temperature materials have yet to be well-established due to the experimental difficulty of making such measurements. One such material for which properties are not reported are scandium oxide, a material of recent interest due to the wide range of technological applications it has and the enormous development potential of scandium metal. The absence of such knowledge is a limiting factor for its further application in high temperature and molten environments. An experimental study was performed to determine the density and surface tension of scandium oxide at varying temperatures using the pendant drop method in the thermal imaging furnace (TIF), which is uniquely suited to making containerless studies of molten materials. From 2781 to 2962°C, the density was found to range from 2.92 ± 0.02 to 3.23 ± 0.13 g/cm³ and the surface tension from 697.3 ± 13.1 to 765.7 ± 7.02 mN/m.