Sintering behavior of bimodal iron nanopowder agglomerates

Abstract

The most important issue in the processing of nanoscale metal powders is whether the metal nanopowder can be fully consolidated into ultra‐fine‐ or nano‐grained powder metallurgy parts by pressureless sintering. This paper focuses on the sintering behavior of bimodal iron (Fe) nanopowder agglomerates by considering their microstructure and densification kinetics. During the sintering, bimodal Fe nanopowder compacts underwent discontinuous shrinkage behavior until they neared full density. Three contributions to the sintering mechanisms, asymmetric sintering, densification enhancement, and grain growth inhibition, are presented in relation to the effect of bimodal nanopowder structure. Smaller nanoparticles in the bimodal nanopowders, which are predominantly present at the boundaries and interstitial spaces of larger nanoparticles, are responsible for the three mechanisms stated above. This result is strongly supported by the apparent activation energy values ranging from 48.2 to 90.6 kJ/mol, which correspond to the energy for grain‐boundary diffusion in Fe. The experimental results of this study show that bimodal nanopowder agglomerates can be used to produce full density nano‐grained powder metallurgical parts by pressureless sintering.