Military low-level radar platform molybdenum-copper composite

Transient liquid phase diffusion bond between molybdenum and copper for nap-of-the-earth radar amplifier. Molybdenum takes the heat, copper carries it away.

It also has very good thermal conductivity. [Tom holds up a tensile specimen.] This is a tensile specimen between molybdenum and copper, and they did a transient liquid phase diffusion bond. I'm sure I talked about this in my joining lecture. Molybdenum will take very high temperatures. If you have a radar system and you want amplified radar — if you're the military trying to fly nap-of-the-earth at sonic velocities, a couple of hundred meters above the surface of the earth, so if you make a mistake you don't have time to make a correction, you have to rely on your radar to keep you from running into a hill — they have some very powerful x-ray machines, and they do that with an electron beam that generates the x-rays. You would melt copper with the heat intensity of that pulsed electron beam, but you won't melt molybdenum. But you need the thermal conductivity of copper, so they make a composite. They braze about two millimeters of molybdenum on the end of a copper piece. The molybdenum takes the heat and the copper carries it away.