Manufacturing and properties of tungsten carbide-oxide composites

Conventional WC-Co hardmetals are widely used in various applications due to their excellent properties. High hardness can be achieved using compositions with little to no content of cobalt or nickel. These binder metals are hazardous to health, making a substitution not only desirable because of availability and cost reasons. A new possibility to manufacture such hard materials is the combination of tungsten carbide with oxides such as Al2O3 and ZrO2. In this way the binder metal content can be replaced. Furthermore the content of the also expensive WC can be reduced. Such metal carbide - oxide composites with oxide contents between 16 vol% and 40 vol% were manufactured. The completely dense composites feature high hardness values of 2000 HV10 to 2400 HV10 while also having an acceptable fracture toughness of up to 7 MPa⋅m1/2. The improved mechanical properties make the replacement of WC-Co hardmetals and binder free WC ceramics in special areas possible.