An infiltration technique using W-Cu composite powder has been developed to enhance microstructural uniformity of W-Cu pseudo-alloy. W-Cu composite powder, manufactured by reduction from WO3 and CuO powder mixtures, were blended with W powder and then cold iso-statically pressed into a cylindrical bar under 150 MPa. The pressed samples were pre-sintered at 1300 oC for 1 hour under hydrogen to make a skeleton structure. This skeleton structure was more homogeneous than that formed by using W and Cu powder mixtures. The skeleton structures were infiltrated with Cu under hydrogen atmosphere. The infiltrated W-Cu pseudo-alloy showed homogeneous microstructure without Cu rich region.

To meet the demands for use in extremely abrasive and corrosive environments, a new material was developed. The VeKo25Cr distinguishes itself through specifically selected amounts of carbon and carbide forming elements such as Cr, Mo, V, W and Nb. The alloy is based on a Fe matrix. The strength after heat treatment and the wear and corrosion properties are compared to those of other materials. VeKo25Cr can be combined with easy-to-process materials such that the difficult handling is minimized to those places on the piece most subjected to operational wear.

Metal sulfide powders such as MnS, MoS2 and FeS are simply used to the machinery processing improvement agent and solid lubricant in powder metallurgy industrial. And then, metal sulfide powders have received relatively little attention from powder metallurgy. Recently, the portable machine is one of the important interfaces between human or human and electronic machine. With the increase of the intelligent activity, the social and industrial demands for information display device and power source are increasing. The transition metal sulfide materials (FeS, ZnS) have received considerable attention due to the large variety of its electric, optical and magnetic properties. Among the metal sulfide, FeS2 is appealing superior material for applications in Li-2nd battery because of high capacity. ZnS is also a famous phosphor material with various luminescence properties, such as photoluminescence (PL) and electroluminescence (EL). So generally used in the fields of display, sensors and laser. Metal sulfide materials, therefore, are provided for most widely application in all industries. In recent years, material researchers have become increasingly interested in studying with synthesis of metal sulfide.

The 21st Century Frontier Program, which is one of the R&D programs funded by Korean government, was launched in 1999 to elevate the status of Korean science and engineering capabilities to the advanced nation in the strategic fields. Currently, 23 different fields of science and engineering programs are carried out by researchers in institutes, universities and industries. Center for Advanced Materials Processing (CAMP) was formulated in 2001 to develop the advanced materials as well as to improve the parts manufacturing process. The main role of CAMP is proposing and forecasting the long term vision in Materials Processing Technology and also supporting the project teams for their best performance in R&D. The CAMP program consists of 5 research areas such as, Multi-layer Ceramic Electronic Parts, Powder Formed Precision Parts, 3 Dimensional Polymer Based Composites, Functional Metal Sheets, Parts Integration Technology. An introduction of R & D activities at CAMP, specially focusing on powder metallurgy, will be presented.

Powder forging has progressed in three decades through the stages of incubation, growth, and maturity, now accounting for 8% of the 5 B global PM market. In this presentation, a history of the technical development of powder forging will be recounted, from early failed attempts and misconceptions, through seminal academic and industrial research, to technical and commercial success. Discussion covers the contributions of government and industrial funding, fundamental knowledge development, and industrial champions for successful implementation. The focus is on lessons learned that may be beneficial to the transition of other technologies for the powder metallurgy industry.

China's PM has made great progress both in the research and development of new materials and large scale production, and has played a more and more important role in the world powder metallurgy industry. In this paper, the status quo of advanced PM materials, and traditional PM industries in China, will be discussed.

In the viewpoint of engineering, materials problem is a key problem, which determines whether the exploitation of fusion energy will be success. The most important class of fusion materials is plasma-facing materials (PFM). W, as high Z high melting-point metal is one of the most important candidate materials due to its high plasma erosion resistance. Improving the ductility of W and W based alloy, lowering its ductile-brittleness transition temperature for meeting the requirements of fusion application is an important task. In this paper, severalpowder meatllurgy methods of fabricating W and W based materials are being investigated.

In recent years, PCB drills with smaller diameters less than 0.1 mm are used and thus there are growing needs for ultra-fine grained cemented carbides. However, ultra-fine WC powder usually causes extraordinary grain growth during sintering which weakens mechanical strength of ultra-fine grained cemented carbides. So we examined several kinds of WC powders to make new ultra-fine grained cemented carbides having superior performance. We found that direct carburized WC powder is very good as a WC raw material. The PCB drills made of the developed ultra-fine grained cemented carbides have higher hardness, toughness and stiffness than conventional ones.

A new extra-fine grade Ni powder (XF Ni) has demonstrated increased sintering activity in Co-Fe-Ni binders for diamond tool applications. XF Ni has the advantage of significantly lower cost than XF Co. Up to 30% of XF Co was substituted with XF Ni while maintaining comparable apparent hardness and transverse rupture strength to pure Co binders. Ni substantially increased the diffusion of Fe. Diamond tool producers can take advantage of the improved sintering properties of XF Ni powder to substantially lower material costs.

Nowadays the market for diamond tools grows rapidly. The present decline in the price of industrial diamond makes it a commoditised product capable of competing with conventional abrasives. In terms of production volume, the largest group of diamond tools comprises the metal-bonded diamond impregnated tools, such as sawblades, wire saws, and core drills for cutting stone and construction materials, and core bits for mining applications. This article provides a compendious coverage of the powder metallurgy (PM) diamond tool-making routes, and identifies the recent trends towards changing the tool design and composition to render it cheaper and more efficient.

Cr2AlC was synthesized by a reactive hot pressing of CrCx (x=0.5) and Al powder mixture used as starting materials at the temperature range of 1200 oC~1400 oC under 25 MPa in Ar atmosphere. Fully dense Cr2AlC with high purity was synthesized by hot pressing CrCx and Al powder mixture at the temperature as low as 1200 oC. The average grain size of synthesized bulk Cr2AlC was varied in the range of 10-100 ㎛ depending on hot pressing temperatures. The maximum flexural strength of synthesized bulk Cr2AlC exceeded 600 MPa.

Alumina microcomponents have distinguishing advantages over Si counterpart. However, the shrinkage of alumina, as high as 20%, makes it difficult to produce precision components meeting a high tolerance. A new fabrication process presented to greatly reduce the shrinkage by producing alumina microcomponents from ultrafine Al powder. The process consists of forming Al powder components through sintering and turning the Al powder component into alumina. In this way, the shrinkage occurring in sintering the Al powder component will be compensated by the expansion appearing when the Al powder component turns into alumina. The process has proven successful.

For microelectronic circuits, the main type of failure is thermal fatigue. Therefore, the search for matched coefficients of thermal expansion (CTE) of packaging materials in combination with a high thermal conductivity is the main task for developments of heat sink materials electronics, and good mechanical properties are also required. The aim of this work is to develop copper matrix composites reinforced with carbon nanofibers to meet these requirements. In this paper, a technology for obtaining a homogeneous mixture of copper and nanofibers will be presented and the microstructure and properties of consolidated samples will be discussed.

In high-performance cold work applications, tool failure depends on the predominating loading conditions. Typical failure mechanisms are a combination of abrasive wear, adhesive wear, plastic deformation, cracking and edge crumbling. In this paper we demonstrate how the microstructure of tool steels can be positively influenced by modifying the alloying system and the production route to meet the demands of the different loading situations which occur during operation. The investigation was focused on ductility, fatigue strength and wear resistance. Theoretical considerations were confirmed by practical tests.

Sintering behavior of the Fe-0.8Mn-0.5C powder system was studied on the specimens with a density of ~7.0 g/cc sintered at 11200C for 30 min in a gas mixture of 7%H2/93%N2 with the inlet dew point of -600C. During the atmosphere monitoring (CO/CO2-content and dew point) was showed, that carbothermical reduction occurs in two different temperature ranges; three peaks of dew point profile also can be distinguished during sintering cycle as well. Following sintering the Mn-content distribution and microstructures around the Mn-source were micro-analytical evaluated; the results showed that manganese travels through porous iron matrix up to ~60 μm.

Homogeneous microstructures of the PM compacts are difficult to attain when mixed elemental powders are used. This study examined the microstructures of pressed-and-sintered and MIM products that contain Ni and Mo.Ni-rich areas, which were lean in carbon and were soft and were found easily in regular specimens. Gaps or cracks near the Ni-rich or Mo-rich areas were also frequently observed. This problem worsened when Ni and Mo particles were large and were irregular in shape. By using ball milling treatment and ferroalloy powders, the microstructure homogeneity and mechanical properties were improved. The addition of 0.5wt%Cr further improved the distribution of Ni because Cr reduced the repulsion effect between nickel and carbon. With the elimination of Ni-rich areas, more bainites and martensites were formed and mechanical properties were significantly improved.

Dimensional change of compact made from (Fe-Cu) prealloyed powder and copper powder compared to that of compact made from iron-copper elemental powder. The compact made from the prealloyed powder with a copper content of 7.18mass% which is nearly equal to its solution limit and copper powder showed only the large contraction in spite of penetration of liquid copper into grain boundary of the prealloyed powder. But the compact made from iron-copper elemental powder showed the large expansion in spite of same chemical composition with former case.

Magnetic powder core is considered to be one of the essential parts in modern electronic devices such as power supplies, digital telecommunication equipments and automotive electronics. To satisfy the recent requirement for the miniaturization of micro-systems and portable devices, the inductors or magnetic powder cores should have reduced compact volume and high universality both in magnetic and geometric aspects. In contrast, in some application areas such as power converters, the price is also one of the important aspects to be considered. To comply with such stringent technical requirements in modern electronic industry, it is highly required to develop magnetic materials with increased frequency stability, higher saturation magnetic flux density, higher permeability and higher quality factor (Q). The magnetic alloy powders which are currently being used in PM industry are permalloy (Ni-Fe), sendust (Fe-Si-Al), iron (Fe), silicon steel (Fe-Si) and ferrous amorphous alloy powders. Recent research trends for the industrial application of soft magnetic material and magnetic powder core will be introduced in the present paper. Emphasis will be placed on the newly required properties and corresponding new PM technologies for newly emerging application fields such as hybrid electric vehicle, alternative and renewable energy systems for next generation.