The automotive industry has focused on the development of metallic materials with high specific strength, which can meet both fuel economy and safety goals. Here, a new class of ultrafine-grained high-Mn steels containing nano-scale oxides is developed using powder metallurgy. First, high-energy mechanical milling is performed to dissolve alloying elements in Fe and reduce the grain size to the nanometer regime. Second, the ball-milled powder is consolidated using spark plasma sintering. During spark plasma sintering, nanoscale manganese oxides are generated in Fe-15Mn steels, while other nanoscale oxides (e.g., aluminum, silicon, titanium) are produced in Fe-15Mn-3Al-3Si and Fe-15Mn-3Ti steels. Finally, the phases and resulting hardness of a variety of high-Mn steels are compared. As a result, the sintered pallets exhibit superior hardness when elements with higher oxygen affinity are added; these elements attract oxygen from Mn and form nanoscale oxides that can greatly improve the strength of high-Mn steels.

Nanopowders provide better details for micro features and surface finish in powder injection molding processes. However, the small size of such powders induces processing challenges, such as low solid loading, high feedstock viscosity, difficulty in debinding, and distinctive sintering behavior. Therefore, the optimization of process conditions for nanopowder injection molding is essential, and it should be carefully performed. In this study, the powder injection molding process for Fe nanopowder has been optimized. The feedstock has been formulated using commercially available Fe nanopowder and a wax-based binder system. The optimal solid loading has been determined from the critical solid loading, measured by a torque rheometer. The homogeneously mixed feedstock is injected as a cylindrical green body, and solvent and thermal debinding conditions are determined by observing the weight change of the sample. The influence of the sintering temperature and holding time on the density has also been investigated. Thereafter, the Vickers hardness and grain size of the sintered samples have been measured to optimize the sintering conditions.

This study investigated the effect of solvent on the fabrication of Ni-free Fe-based alloy nano powders by employing the PWE (pulsed wire evaporation) in liquid and compared the alloy particles fabricated by three different methods (PWE in liquid, PWE in Ar, plasma arc discharge), for high temperature oxidation-resistant metallic porous body for high temperature soot filter system. Three different solvents (ethanol, acetone, distilled water) of liquid were adapted in PWE in liquid process, while X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning microscope (FE-SEM), and transmission electron microscope (TEM) were used to investigate the characteristics of the Fe-Cr-Al nano powders. The alloy powder synthesized by PWE in ethanol has good particle size and no surface oxidation compared to that of distilled water. Since the Fe-based alloy powders, which were fabricated by PWE in Ar and PAD process, showed surface oxidation by TEM analysis, the PWE in ethanol is the best way to fabricate Fe-based alloy nano powder.

This study investigated the effect of wire diameter and applied voltage on the fabrication of Ni-free Fe-based alloy nano powders by employing the PWE (pulsed wire evaporation) in liquid, for high temperature oxidation-resistant metallic porous body for high temperature particulate matter (or soot) filter system. Three different diameter (0.1, 0.2, and 0.3 mm) of alloy wire and various applied voltages from 0.5 to 3.0 kV were main variables in PWE process, while X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning microscope (FE-SEM), and transmission electron microscope (TEM) were used to investigate the characteristics of the Fe-Cr-Al nano powders. It was controlled the number of explosion events, since evaporated and condensed nano-particles were coalesced to micron-sized secondary particles, when exceeded to the specific number of explosion events, which were not suitable for metallic porous body preparation. As the diameter of alloy wire increased, the voltage for electrical explosion increased and the size of primary particle decreased.

The optimum route to fabricate nano-sized Fe-50 wt% Co and hydrogen-reduction behavior of calcined Fe-/Conitrate was investigated. The powder mixture of metal oxides was prepared by solution mixing and calcination of Fe-/Co-nitrate. A DTA-TG and microstructural analysis revealed that the nitrates mixture by the calcination at 300˚C for 2 h was changed to Fe-oxide/Co3O4 composite powders with an average particle size of 100 nm. The reduction behavior of the calcined powders was analyzed by DTA-TG in a hydrogen atmosphere. The composite powders of Fe-oxide and Co3O4 changed to a Fe-Co phase with an average particle size of 40 nm in the temperature range of 260-420˚C. In the TG analysis, a two-step reduction process relating to the presence of Fe3O4 and a CoO phase as the intermediate phase was observed. The hydrogen-reduction kinetics of the Fe-oxide/Co3O4 composite powders was evaluated by the amount of peak shift with heating rates in TG. The activation energies for the reduction, estimated by the slope of the Kissinger plot, were 96 kJ/mol in the peak temperature range of 231-297˚C and 83 kJ/mol of 290-390˚C, respectively. The reported activation energy of 70.4-94.4 kJ/mol for the reduction of Fe- and Co-oxides is in reasonable agreement with the measured value in this study.

The Zr-based bulk metallic glass matrix composites of a mixture of gas-atomized metallic glass powders and Fe-based nanostructured powders were fabricated by spark plasma sintering. The Fe-based nanostructured powders adopted for the enhancement of plasticity were well distributed in the matrix after consolidation, and the matrix remains as a fully amorphous phase. The successful consolidation of metallic glass matrix composite with high density was attributed to viscous flow in the supercooled liquid state during spark plasma sintering. Unlike other amorphous matrix composites, in which improved ductility could be obtained at the expense of their strength, the developed composite exhibited improvement both in strength and ductility. The ductility improvement in the composite was considered to be due to the formation of multiple shear bands under the presence of the Fe-based nanostructured particles.

To investigate the effect of the parameters of the plasma arc discharge process on the particle formation and particle characteristics of the iron nano powder, the chamber pressure, input current and the hydrogen volume fraction in the powder synthesis atmosphere were changed. The particle size and phase structure of the synthesized iron powder were studied using the FE-SEM, FE-TEM and XRD. The synthesized iron powder particle had a core-shell structure composed of the crystalline -Fe in the core and the crystalline in the shell. The powder generation rate and particle size mainly depended on the hydrogen volume fraction in the powder synthesis atmosphere. The particle size increased simultaneously with increasing the hydrogen volume fraction from 10% to 50%, and it ranged from about 45nm to 130 nm.