Consolidation of Hierarchy-Structured Nanopowder Agglomerates and Its Application to Net-Shaping Nanopowder Materials

This paper provides an overview on our recent investigations on the consolidation of hierarchy-structured nanopowder agglomerates and related applications to net-shaping nanopowder materials. Understanding the nanopowder agglomerate sintering (NAS) process is essential to processing of net-shaped nanopowder materials and components with small and complex shape. The key concept of the NAS process is to enhance material transport through controlling the powder interface volume of nanopowder agglomerates. Based upon this concept, we have suggested a new idea of full density processing for fabricating micro-powder injection molded part using metal nanopowder agglomerates produced by hydrogen reduction of metal oxide powders. Studies on the full density sintering of die compacted-and powder injection molded iron base nano-agglomerate powders are introduced and discussed in terms of densification process and microstructure.This work has been financially supported by Korea Research Council for Industrial Science and Technology ("Development of the Preparation Technology of 0.1-10 mu m Sized Metal Powders and Fine-Components for Micro Electronics", 2012-00000001921). This research was also supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT & Future Planning (2013R1A1A2008874)