Fabrication of Titanium Carbonitride Based Cermets by Microwave and Spark Plasma Sintering

Abstract

Titanium Carbonitride (TiCN) based cermets are important cutting tools materials. Fabrication of the material is time and cost consuming process for the traditional sintering. In this paper, TiCN based cermets were prepared by using microwave sintering and spark plasma sintering compare to traditional sintering, and the microstructures and properties were investigated. The results show that microwave sintering and the spark plasma sintering can obtain similar properties with traditional sintering with shorter sintering time, this will greatly save energy. The strength and hardness of TiCN based cermets sintered by microwave sintering is 1136Mpa and HRA87, respectively. Microwave wave sintering can obtain finer grain than traditional sintering, and spark plasma sintering have the finest grain, which is in the range of 0.3μm~0.5μm. Due to the present of big pores, the bulk of spark plasma sintering has the lowest bending strength.