• Proceedings of the Korean Powder Metallurgy Institute Conference
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• 2006.09b
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• pp.864-865
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• 2006

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.

• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
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• v.49 no.6
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• pp.507-512
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• 2016

Expensive silver powder is used to form electrodes in most IT equipment, and recently, many attempts have been made to lower manufacturing costs by developing powders with Ag-Ni or Ag-Cu core-shell structures. This study examined the sintering behavior of Ag-Ni electrode powder with a core-shell structure for silicon solar cell with high energy efficiency. The electrode powder was found to have a surface similar to pure Ag powder, and cross-sectional analysis revealed that Ag was uniformly coated on Ni powder. Each electrode was formed by sintering in the range of $500^{\circ}C$ to $800^{\circ}C$, and the specimen sintered at $600^{\circ}C$ had the lowest sheet resistance of $5.5m{\Omega}/{\Box}$, which is about two times greater than that of pure Ag. The microstructures of electrodes formed at varying sintering temperatures were examined to determine why sheet resistance showed a minimum value at $600^{\circ}C$. The electrode formed at $600^{\circ}C$ had the best Ag connectivity, and thus provided a better path for the flow of electrons.

• Journal of Powder Materials
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.181-187
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• 1996

Cobalt and VC powders were ball milled with M2 grade high speed steel powders under various ball to powder ratios. The powders milled under higher ball to powder ratio become finer, more irregular and have a broader size distribution, and thus possess a lower compressibility and a better sinterability regarding densification. Increasing the ball to powder ratio lowered the sintering temperature to obtain the density level necessary to isolate all the pores. Lowering the sintering temperature is very critical to maintain fine microstructure since grain and carbide coarsening are accelerated by higher sintering temperature due to more liquid phase formation. The powders obtained by ball milling at 20 to 1 ratio has the lowest compressibility but has the best sinterability, almost compatible to unmilled pure M2 powders. A sintered body over 97% theoretical density with fine microstructures having average grain size of ~10 microns was obtained from the powder by sintering at 1260 $^{\circ}C$ for 1 hour in vacuum. XRD results indicate that two types of carbides are mainly present in the sintered structure, MC and $M_{6}C$ type. The MC type carbides are more or less round shaped and mainly located at the grain boundaries whereas the $M_{6}C$ type are angular shaped and mainly located inside the grains.

• Proceedings of the Korean Powder Metallurgy Institute Conference
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• 2001.04a
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• pp.29-30
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• 2001

• Journal of Powder Materials
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.246-250
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• 1999

The effects of the ${\beta}-Si_3N_4$ starting particle size and $\alpha$/$\beta$ phase transformation during sintering process on the microstructure evolution of Yttrium $\alpha$-Sialon ceramics were investigated. As-received ${\beta}-Si_3N_4$ powder (mean particle size: 0.54$\mu$m) and classified ${\beta}-Si_3N_4$ powder(mean particle size: $0.26\mu{m}$) were used as starting powders. With decreasing the starting particle size, the growth of elongated grains was enhanced, which resulted in the whisker -like microstructure with elongated grains. These results were discussed in relation to the two-dimensional nucleation and growth theory. In the specimen heat treated at $1600^{\circ}C$ for 10h before sintering at $1950^{\circ}C$for 1h under 40atm(2-step sintering), the grain size was smaller than of the 1-step sintering at 195$0^{\circ}C$ for 1h. However, bimodal microstructure evolution were not not remarkable in both sample, which is ascribed to the $\alpha$-phase contents existing in ${\beta}-Si_3N_4$ starting powder.

• Proceedings of the Korean Powder Metallurgy Institute Conference
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• 2006.09b
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• pp.810-811
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• 2006

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, $Al_2O_3$ 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.

• Proceedings of the Korean Powder Metallurgy Institute Conference
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• 2006.09a
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• pp.209-210
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• 2006

Organic binders are usually pre-mixed with ceramic powders to enhance the formability during the shape forming process. These binders, however, must be eliminated before sintering in order to avoid pore formation and unusual grain growth during sintering. The present work was performed to investigate the effects of residual binder on grain growth behavior during sintering of $Pb(Mg_{1/3}Nb_{2/3})O_3-PbTiO_3$ piezoelectric ceramics. The microstructures of sintered samples were examined for various thermal processes and atmosphere at debinding. Addition of binder seems to promote abnormal grain growth especially in incompletely debinded regions and to make the grain shape change from corner-rounded to faceted.

• Proceedings of the Korean Powder Metallurgy Institute Conference
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• 2006.09a
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• pp.266-267
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• 2006

We present a systematic study of the heating and pre-sintering behavior of porous copper powder metal compacts. We employ a TE102 single mode microwave system to position the samples in the separated electric field (E) or magnetic field (H) anti-node of the cavity. We observe significant differences in the heating, pre-sintering, and microstructure evolution of the samples due to the individual fields. We note that sample history (whether heated first in the E-field or H-field) greatly effects a difference in heating trends and subsequent heating behavior and does not appear to be solely a thermal process.

• Proceedings of the Korean Powder Metallurgy Institute Conference
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• 2006.09a
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• pp.278-279
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• 2006

The increasing demand for automotive industries to reduce the weight of the vehicles has led to a growing usage of Al alloy powder metallurgy (P/M) parts. In order to control the sintered microstructure and mechanical properties of the aluminium alloy powder metallurgical (P/M) parts, it is essential to establish a fundamental understanding of the microstructural development during the sintering process. This paper presents a detailed study of the effect of temperature and initial starting materials on the evolution of microstructure during the sintering of Al-Cu-Mg-Si blends for PM.

• Journal of Powder Materials
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.167-173
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• 1996

The effect of ball milling on the pressureless sintering of MoSi$_2$ was investigated. Ball milling was conducted at 70 rpm for 72 hours using different balls and vessels: one used tungsten carbide balls in a plastic vessel(referred as B-powder) and the other stainless steel ball in a stainless steel vessel(referred as C- powder). The powder was compacted with 173MPa and subsequently sintered at the temperature range of 1150 $^{\circ}C$ and 1450 $^{\circ}C$ in H$_2$, atmosphere. Sintered density was measured and scanning electron micrograph was observed. Over 90% of the theoretical density was attained at 1250 $^{\circ}C$ within 10 minutes for C-powders, while the similar densification required a sintering temperature of 1450 $^{\circ}C$ for B-powders. Such a difference in sinterability between B and C-powders was discussed in terms of the effect of particle size reduction and activated sintering caused by Ni and/or Fe introduced during ball milling.