Powder injection moulding of metal ceramic interpenetrating phase composites

Materials that combine metallic and ceramic properties are of interest for various applications, such as surgical instruments or grinding tools. Powder technology offers the possibility to mix metals and ceramics in form of their powders and process them to complex shapes by means of powder injection moulding. Thus, different material combinations were chosen in order to demonstrate a broad applicability of this approach. The produced composite materials were characterised regarding their densities, mechanical properties and microstructures. It could be observed that the powder injection moulded samples showed rather typical densities for specimens produced by this process, up to 98·3% relative density. The mechanical properties varied strongly mainly dependent upon the materials used in the composites. Thus, the range of mechanical properties is wide and leads to various possibilities to adjust certain properties to a desired level. In combination with the possibilities of the powder injection moulding process to produce near net shape parts cost-efficiently in large quantities, these versatile composite materials can be made accessible for various applications.