We prepared 8 samples of non-silver and silver-added master alloys containing silicon to confirm the existence of nickel-silicides. We then prepared products made of 14K and 18K white gold by using the prepared master alloys containing 0.25, 0.35, and 0.50 wt% silicon to check for nickel release. We then employed the EN 1811 testing standard to investigate the nickel release of the white gold products, and we also confirmed the color of the white gold products with an UV-VISNIR- color meter. We observed NiSix residue in all master alloys containing more than 0.50 wt% Si with EDS-nitric acid etching. For the white gold products, we could not confirm the existence of NiSix through XRD after aqua regia etching. In the EN 1811 test, only the white gold products with 0.25 wt% silicon master alloys successfully passed the nickel release regulations. Moreover, we confirmed that our white gold products showed excellent Lab indices as compared to those of commercial white gold ones, and the silver-added master alloys offered a larger L index. Our results indicate that employing 0.25 wt% silicon master alloys might be suitable for white gold products without nickel-silicide defects and nickel release problems.

This study investigated the densification behavior of rhenium alloys including W-25 wt.%Re and Re-2W-1Ta (pure Re) during sintering. The dilatometry experiments were carried out to obtain the in-situ shrinkage in H2 atmo-sphere. The measured data was analyzed through shrinkage, strain rate and relative density, and then symmetricallytreated to construct the linearized form of master sintering curve (MSC) and MSC as a well-known and straightforwardapproach to describe the densification behavior during sintering. The densification behaviors for each material were ana-lyzed in many respects including apparent activation energy, densification parameter, and densification ratio. MSC witha minimal set of preliminary experiments can make the densification behavior to be characterized and predicted as wellas provide guideline to sinter cycle design. Considering the results of linearized form and MSC, it was confirmed thatthe W-25 wt.%Re compared to Pure Re is more easily densified at the relatively low temperature.