Recently, research on MAX phase materials has been actively conducted. M of MAX phase is made of early transition metal element, A is A-group (IIIA or IVA) element, and X is Carbon or Nitrogen. It has the chemical formula of MnAXn-1, and is called the 211, 312, and 413 groups according to the indices(n=1,2,3). MXene material is characterized by having a layered structure of 2D structure like graphene by etching the element corresponding to A-gruop in the MAX phase. So far, MXene materials have been reported to be applied in various fields. In particular, research is being actively conducted as anode material for Li secondary batteries, electromagnetic wave shielding material, and hydrogen storage alloy material. In the pulse energization active sintering method, the surface of the powder particles is cleaned and activated more easily than the conventional electrical sintering process and material transfers at both the macro and micro level, so that a high-quality sintered body can be obtained at low temperature and fast time. In this study, the MAX phase was synthesized in a short time by using a pulse current active sintering apparatus, and the MXene material was prepared from the synthesized MAX phase and the structure was analyzed.

Recently, the necessity of designing and applying tool materials that perform machining of difficult-to-cut materials in a cryogenic treatment where demand is increasing. The objective of this study is to evaluate the performance of cryogenically treated WC-5 wt% NbC hard materials fabricated by a pulsed current activated sintering process. The densely consolidated specimens are cryogenically exposed to liquid nitrogen for 6, 12, and 24 h. All cryogenically treated samples exhibit compressive stress in the sintered body compared with the untreated sample. Furthermore, a change in the lattice constant leads to compressive stress in the specimens, which improves their mechanical performance. The cryogenically treated samples exhibit significant improvement in mechanical properties, with a 10.5 % increase in Vickers hardness and a 60 % decrease in the rupture strength compared with the untreated samples. However, deep cryogenic treatment of over 24 h deteriorates the mechanical properties indicating that excessive treatment causes tensile stress in the specimens. Therefore, the cryogenic treatment time should be controlled precisely to obtain mechanically enhanced hard materials.

Expensive PCBN or ceramic cutting tools are used for the processing of difficult-to-cut materials such as Ti and Ni alloy materials. These tools have a problem of breaking easily due to their high hardness but low fracture toughness. To solve this problem, cutting tools that form various coating layers are used in low-cost WC-Co hard material tools, and researches on various tool materials are being conducted. In this study, WC-5, 10, and 15 wt%Ni hard materials for difficult-to-cut cutting materials are densified using horizontal ball milled WC-Ni powders and pulsed current activated sintering method (PCAS method). Each PCASed WC–Ni hard materials are almost completely dense, with a relative density of up to 99.7 ~ 99.9 %, after the simultaneous application of pressure of 60 MPa and electric current for 2 min; process involves almost no change in the grain size. The average grain sizes of WC and Ni for WC-5, 10, and 15 wt%Ni hard materials are about 1.09 ~ 1.29 and 0.31 ~ 0.51 μm, respectively. Vickers hardness and fracture toughness of WC-5, 10, and 15 wt%Ni hard materials are about 1,923 ~ 1,788 kg/mm2 and 13.2 ~ 14.3 MPa.m1/2, respectively. Microstructure and phase analyses of PCASed WC-Ni hard materials are performed.

Porous Fe-Cu-C alloy was sintered by Pulsed Current Activated Sintering(PCAS) method within 10 min from horizontal ball mill mixture. The relative density of Fe-20wt.%Cu-0.8wt.%C alloy fabricated by PCAS method was 91%. The average hardness of the Fe-20wt.%Cu-0.8wt.%C alloy was HRB 92. The phase analysis, microstructure and composition information of the sintered alloy were investigated by using XRD, FESEM, EDAX.

Cu-Mn compacts are fabricated by the pulsed current activated sintering method (PCAS) for sputtering target application. For fabricating the compacts, optimized sintering conditions such as the temperature, pulse ratio, pressure, and heating rate are controlled during the sintering process. The final sintering temperature and heating rate required to fabricate the target materials having high density are 700oC and 80oC/min, respectively. The heating directly progresses up to 700oC with a 3 min holding time. The sputtering target materials having high relative density of 100% are fabricated by employing a uniaxial pressure of 60 MPa and a sintering temperature of 700oC without any significant change in the grain size. Also, the shrinkage displacement of the Cu-Mn target materials considerably increases with an increase in the pressure at sintering temperatures up to 700oC.

Nanostuctured TiAl powder was synthesized by high energy ball milling. A dense nanostuctured TiAl was consolidated using pulsed current activated sintering method within 2 minutes from mechanically synthesized powders of TiAl and horizontally milled powders of Ti+Al. The grain size and hardness of TiAl sintered from horizontally milled Ti+Al powders and high energy ball milled TiAl powder were 35 nm, 20 nm and 450 kg/, 630 kg/, respectively.

Pulsed Current Sintering (PCS) process possesses some problems that need to be resolved. We, therefore aims at understanding phenomena of PCS process by presenting some basic data on in situ sintering behavior of PCS. Special graphite mold equipped with thermo couple and electrodes were designed to measure the temperature, electric current and voltage inside the powder during PCS process. We apply three types of raw materials, especially for ZnO as semiconductor, Al2O3 as non-conductor and WC as good conductor. The electric current and voltage were measured for each powder during PCS process. In addition, their electric resistance properties were calculated.

In this paper, we show some experimental results of binder-free WC sintered by Pulsed Electric Current Sintering (PECS) also known as Field Assisted Sintering Technology (FAST). These binder-free WC have extremely hardness and stiffness. However, these mechanical properties are dependent on the sintering condition, e.g., maximum temperature, applied pressure, etc. We show some relationship between mechanical properties and sintering condition to improve to sinter the binder-free WC.

A new process of pulsed electric current sintering was developed. It combines compaction with activated sintering effectively and can manufacture bulky nano-crystalline materials very quickly. A nano-structured steel is obtained with high relative density and hardness by this process. The average grain size of iron matrix is 58nm and the carbide particulate size is less than 100 nm. The densification temperature of ball-milled powders is approximately lower than that of blended powders. When the sintering temperature increases, the density of as-sintered specimen increases but the hardness of as-sintered specimen first increases and then decreases.

Austenitic stainless steel has been used as a corrosion resistance material. However, austenitic stainless steel has poor wear resistance property due to its low hardness. In this investigation, we apply powder composite process to obtain hard layer of Stainless steel. The composite material was fabricated from planetary ball milled SUS316L stainless steel powder and WC powder and then sintered by Pulsed Current Sintering (PCS) method. We also added TiC powder as a hard particle in WC layer. Evaluations of wear properties were performed by pin-on-disk wear testing machine, and a remarkable improvement in wear resistance property was obtained.