Equilibrium Study of Chromium Containing Cemented Carbides : Solubility of chromium in tungsten carbide and η-phase

This project treats the W-C-Co-Cr quaternary system at low carbon contents. The main goals with this project were to find a four phase equilibrium between WC, Co-binder phase, η-phase (M6C) and a fourth unknown phase, to discover which the fourth phase is and to establish whether or not WC dissolves any chromium. In order to answer these questions a number of alloys were prepared, the compositions were chosen using thermodynamic calculations and observations from previous alloys. The samples were prepared using a powder metallurgical route and they were sintered at 1410oC. The samples were prepared for analysis via grinding and polishing and then analyzed using LOM, SEM, EDS, WDS and XRD. The results showed that no four phase equilibrium could be found in the analyzed spectra and therefore neither could the fourth phase. However other interesting phenomena were found. The η-phase showed a much higher solubility of chromium than previously thought. According to the current Sandvik-Seco database the η-phase should dissolve a maximum of 0.21 wt% and the maximum value detected using WDS was 8.42 wt%. The solubility of chromium in WC was found to be approximately 5 wt%. The most important conclusion that could be drawn from this project was that the Sandvik-Seco database for the W-C-Co-Cr system still needs to be improved, especially concerning the solubility of chromium in the η-phase