During the sintering of powder materials, many these are microstructural phenomena are caused by atomic diffusion. (1) neck formation and compact densification, (2) grain growth, i.e., growth of matrix grains and dispersed grains, (3) alloying or generation of compound, (4) generations of peculiar and hard layers near sintered compact surface, etc. The studies of the present author and co-workers on these phenomena which were carried out during 40 years are briefly introduced.

Hard materials such as hardmetal, coated hardmetal, cermet, ceramics and diamond or c-BN sintered compact are a kind of grain-dispersed alloy with high volume of hard particles. These are used for cutting tools, wear-resistant tools, rock bits, high pressure apparatus, etc. The annual production in Japan is about 1.7 billion dollars (200 billion yen). This is greatly owed to the development in science and technology which has been accomplished by applying new concepts such as fine or uniform grain microstructure, orientation of crystal grains, functionally graded material, artificial lattice and coherent bonding in recent years. In this review, the development in recent years in Japan is briefly summarized.

The characteristics of various important microstructural factors of WC-base hard- metals (cemented carbides) such as the amount of Co metal binder phase, the carbide grain size, the microstructural defects acting as a fracture source, the solid solubility of tungsten in the binder phase affected by the carbon content, the precipitation of , the domain size of binder phase, the formation of layer or Co-rich layer and CVD or PVD coated layer, and the effects of these factors on the flexural strength of the hardmetals are reviewed.

Har dmaterials such as cemented carbides with or without coated layer, cermets, ceramics and diamond or c-BN high pressure sintered compact are used for cutting tools, wear -resistant parts, rock drilling bits and/or high pressure vessels. These hardmaterials contain not only hard phase, but also second consituent as the element for forming ductile phase and/or sintering aid, and the mechanical properties of each material depend on (1) the amount of the second constituent as well as (2) the grain size of the hard phase. The hardness of each material mainly depends on these two factors. The fracture strength, however, largely depends on other microstructur a1 factors as well as the above two factors. For all hardmaterials, the fracture strength is consider ably affected by (3) the size of microstructur a1 defect which acts as the fracture source. In cemented carbides, the following factors which are generated mainly due to the addition of the second constituent are also important; (4) the variation of the carbon content in the normal phase region free from V-phase and graphite phase, (5) the precipitation of during heating at about ,(6) the domain size of binder phase, and (7) the formation of -free layer or Co-rich layer near the surface of sintered compacts. For cemented carbides coated with thin hard substance, the important factors are as follows; (8) the kind of coated substance, (9) the formation of -phase layer at the interface between coated layer and substrate, (10) the type of residual stress (tension or compression) in the coated layer which depends on the kind of coating method (CVD or PVD), and (11) the properties of the substrate, and (12) the combination, coherency and periodicity of multi-layers. In the lecture, the details of these factors and their effect on the strength will be explained.