Tungsten carbide (WC) hard materials are used in various industries and possess a superior hardness compared to other hard materials. They have particularly high melting points, high strength, and abrasion resistance. Accordingly, tungsten carbide hard materials are used for wear-resistant tools, cutting tools, machining tools, and other tooling materials. In this study, the WC-5wt.%Co, Fe, Ni hard materials are densified using the horizontal ball milled WC-Co, WC-Fe, and WC-Ni powders by a spark plasma sintering process. The WC-5Co, WC-5Fe, and WC-5Ni hard materials are almost completely densified with a relative density of up to 99.6% after simultaneous application of a pressure of 60 MPa and an electric current for about 15 min without any significant change in the grain size. The average grain size of WC-5Co, WC-5Fe, and WC-5Ni that was produced through SPS was about 0.421, 0.779, and 0.429 μm, respectively. The hardness and fracture toughness of the dense WC-5Co, WC-5Fe, WC-5Ni hard materials were also investigated.

Nanosized tungsten carbide powders were synthesized by the chemical vapor condensation(CVC) process using the pyrolysis of tungsten hexacarbonyl(). The effect of CVC parameters on the formation and the microstructural change of as-prepared powders were studied by XRD, BET and TEM. The loosely agglomerated nanosized tungsten-carbide() particles having the smooth rounded tetragonal shape could be obtained below in argon and air atmosphere respectively. The grain size of powders was decreased from 53 nm to 28 nm with increasing reaction temperature. The increase of particle size with reaction temperature represented that the condensation of precursor vapor dominated the powder formation in CVC reactor. The powder prepared at was consisted of the pure W and cubic tungsten-carbide (), and their surfaces had irregular shape because the pure W was formed on the powders. The and W powders having the average particles size of about 5 nm were produced in vacuum.