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In situ characterization of the sintering process is a difficult task, in particular for systems without pronounced dimensional changes. Dilatometry is not too helpful in those cases, and therefore other properties have to be recorded. In the present study, sintering of ferrous powder compacts was studied in situ by measuring the thermal diffusivity a using a laser flash apparatus. This property is a measure to characterise the heat flow through a material; it depends on the contact area between the particles and thus reveals their change during sintering. It is shown that the change of a during sintering of ferrous compacts is much less pronounced than in the case of cemented carbides which is not surprising when regarding the widely differing porosity changes. The results are however in good agreement with expectations when considering some experimental limitations. The trend for the thermal conductivity λ. which can be calculated from a, the specific heat and the density, is in good agreement with that found for the electrical conductivity, both properties being linked through Wiedemann-Franz' law.

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The evolution in both stress and resistance has been investigated on sputtered NiCr(60 wt %) resistive films during annealing (temperature cycles to maximum 700 °C). Aiming at the correlation of stress, resistance, and microstructure, samples from measurements to various maximum temperatures were analyzed by x-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy including microanalysis. A series of metastable phases was found with increasing temperature: the as-deposited amorphous phase a, the supersaturated body-centered-cubic (bcc) solid solution αss(Cr) (400 °C), and the tetragonal σ phase (500 °C). This was followed by the equilibrium two-phase alloy bcc α(Cr) plus face-centered-cubic γ(Ni) (600 °C). The phase transitions, characterized by differential scanning calorimetry, were found to be exothermic. The transition a→αss(Cr) results in a distinct tensile-stress component due to material densification. The resistivity is sharply decreasing and the temperature coefficient of resistance is changing from negative to positive values during the a→αss(Cr) transition.