China Has a Breakthrough in High-performance Tungsten Carbide

       

China
tungsten carbide industry has 60 years of development history, which
has been regarded as a big country of carbide. According to carbide
branch of CTIA (China Tungsten Industry Association) statistics, the
last three years (2012-2014) of the annual output of domestic carbide
2.2-2.5 million tons, which more than 40% of global output. Although the
production and consumption of tungsten carbide of our country is at the
leading place around the world, as far as the level of manufacture and
technology, we still fall behind. In terms of the plateau of domestic
tungsten carbide industries development, we developed many research
projects and establish a special carbide R&D team, after more than
ten years of basic research and technology development to study
ultra-fine carbide nano-scale manufacturing equipment and engineering
application of a series of new technologies, and work closely with
companies to develop over carbide materials and high value-added
products toward high-end applications development.

For
WC-based tungsten carbide, compared with conventional coarse grain (the
average grain size about 13μm), tungsten carbide with ultrafine grain
(the average grain size about 200-500nm) and nano grain (the average
grain size lower than 200nm) has high hardness, high strength, high
fracture strength and excellent wear and corrosion resistance, which
becomes the indispensable material for drilling, cutting and milling
process. Since late 1990s, nano tungsten carbide has been emerged many
new processes. In recent years, ultra-fine carbide and nano-scale
preparation and industrial applications become international attention,
reflecting the forefront of competitive research focus, which
experienced a period of many preparation methods of nano carbide change
of evolution. Such as sol - gel / co-precipitation method, a plasma
method, but they are limited to use in nano WC powder synthetise in
laboratory; spark plasma sintering, high pressure and so consolidation
is limited to the preparation laboratory simple shape and small
three-dimensional nano-polycrystalline material; Complex spray
conversion method steps, the high cost of the process, demanding
precision control, which greatly limits the technology in the
manufacture of nano-WC-based powder application.