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    Absolute structure determination with electron microscopy

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    Microstructural development and mechanical properties of iron based cermets processed by pressureless and spark plasma sintering

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    Iron-based cermets are an interesting class of metal-ceramic composites in which properties and the factors influencing them are to be explored. In this work the metal matrix contains Cr, W, Mo and V as alloying elements, and the hard phase is constituted by 50 vol% of titanium carbonitride (TiCN) particles. The work studies the influence of the C content and the processing method on the sinterability, microstructure and hardness of the developed cermet materials. For that purpose, cermet samples with different C content in the matrix (0 wt%, 0.25 wt%, 0.5 wt%, 1.0 wt%) were prepared by conventional pressureless sintering (CPS) and, in order to achieve finer microstructures and to reduce the sintering time, by spark plasma sintering (SPS). The density and hardness (HV30) of the processed materials was evaluated, while their phase composition and microstructure was characterised by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), respectively. The equilibrium phase diagram of the composite material was calculated by ThermoCalc software in order to elucidate the influence of the carbon content on the obtained phases and developed microstructures.The authors would like to acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through the R&D Project MAT2009-14448-C02 and the Comunidad de Madrid through the program ESTRUMAT-CM (reference S2009/MAT- 1585). K. Vanmeensel thanks the Research Fund Flanders (FWO) for his postdoctoral fellowship.Publicad
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