Preparation of titanium deposit in chloride melts

The quality of titanium depends largely on the morphology of titanium deposit, which can be affected by electrokinetic parameters during the electrolysis. To obtain titanium deposit, titanium dichloride was prepared successfully by using a titanium sponge to reduce titanium tetrachloride in NaCl-KCl. Electroanalytical methods including cyclic voltammetry, chronopotentiometry, and square wave voltammetry were employed to investigate the cathodic behavior of Ti ²⁺. The results proved that the reduction of Ti(II) proceeds in a one-step, diffusion-controlled process. A series of the tests were carried out to investigate the influence of electrokinetic parameters on the titanium deposit morphology. It was concluded that the deposit titanium grain size increases with increasing titanium ion concentration. In the system with a high titanium ion concentration, the grain size also increases with increasing the current density until a certain value. However, a subsequent increase of current density results in the formation of dendrites. It was found that stirring was an effective way to avoid dendrite. A compact deposit with large grains was obtained by the electrolysis with the stirring of argon injection.