Sintering and joining of low temperature co-fired tungsten and aluminum oxide

Conventional methods used to fabricate co-fired tungsten/alumina composites usually rely on high temperature processing (>1500C). As it would be beneficial or even necessary for some applications to produce such composites at relatively low firing temperatures, low-temperature processing techniques and the attendant knowledge of processing-property relationships need to be developed. In this thesis, a set of experiments and simulations are performed to obtain a better understanding of sintering and joining of the tungsten/alumina system processed at temperatures near or below 12000C. The technique of activated sintering for tungsten is investigated, whereby a minimal content of additives enables low firing temperatures through a change in the sintering mechanism for tungsten. Tungsten compacts produced by this method are found to sinter only to the "initial stage" and are characterized by high residual porosity level. Hardness and fracture toughness of such partially-sintered materials are examined experimentally and analytically, and dependence of mechanical properties on the relative particle neck size is observed. Various studies are carried out to examine both fundamental and practical aspects of joining co-fired tungsten/alumina.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Boonyongmaneerat, Yuttanant

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Christopher A. Schuh and Thomas W. Eagar.

• Materials Science and Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/36204
• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Identifier URI

http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/36204

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/36204