Synthesis of tungsten through spark plasma and conventional sintering processes

Abstract

There is a continuous effort in reducing the sintering temperature and sintering time for synthesizing tungsten samples using different approaches. In this paper, spark plasma sintering (SPS) technique is used to consolidate pure tungsten of 10 micron average particle size at a lower temperature of 1200°C. For comparison, the tungsten compact is also sintered in a conventional furnace under vacuum condition. The microstructures of the samples sintered by both the processes indicate partial sintering of tungsten. The density, hardness and grain size measurements are recorded for the sintered samples and the results are compared for both sintered processes. The densities of the tungsten samples sintered through spark plasma sintering and conventional sintering are found to be 66.79 g/cm3 and 68.26 g/cm3 respectively. The hardness values follow the same trend as found in sintered density values. The average grain diameter of the tungsten grain does not show much variation between the processes.