Alternative Fabrication Routes toward Oxide-Dispersion-Strengthened Steels and Model Alloys

The standard powder metallurgy (PM) route for the fabrication of oxide-dispersion-strengthened (ODS) steels involves gas atomization to produce a prealloyed powder, mechanical alloying (MA) with fine oxide powders, consolidation, and finally thermal/thermomechanical treatment (TMT). It is well established that ODS steels with superior property combinations, for example, creep and tensile strength, can be produced by this PM/MA route. However, the fabrication process is complex and expensive, and the fitness for scaling up to the industrial scale is limited. At the laboratory scale, production of small amounts of well-controlled model systems continues to be desirable for specific purposes, such as modeling-oriented experiments. Thus, from the laboratory to industrial application, there is growing interest in complementary or alternative fabrication routes for ODS steels and related model systems, which offer a different balance of cost, convenience, properties, and scalability.