Intermetallic composites as wear resistant materials

Novák Pavel - University of Chemistry and Technology (Czech Republic)

In current industry, cemented carbide is widely used as the tool material for many purposes, e.g. machining or drilling. However, its main components – tungsten and cobalt – are listed by European Commission as the critical raw materials with very high supply risk. Therefore, there is a research activity to substitute these elements. It can be potentially done by three ways – substitution of tungsten by other carbide-forming element, substitution of cobalt binder or the design of a material without these elements. The latter approach was selected in this work, which aims at the solution based on combination of two intermetallics – iron silicide and suitable transition metal aluminide. Optimization of the preparation of the composite by powder metallurgy combining mechanical alloying and spark plasma sintering is presented in this work, together with basic characterization of the prepared composite.