Development of Creep-Resistant Tungsten Carbide Copper Cemented Carbide

Fine-grained tungsten carbide copper (WC-Cu) cemented carbide was sintered via spark plasma sintering at 1773K using a fine WC powder with a mean particle size of 0.11 mm. The mechanical properties were compared with tungsten carbide cobalt (WC-Co) cemented carbide and a binderless WC-sintered material. The Vickers hardness and fracture toughness obtained by the indentation fracture method for WC-10mass% Cu cemented carbide were 1600 and 10MPa m, respectively, which were in no way inferior to the values for WC-Co cemented carbide. Increasing the amount of copper improved the toughness and degraded the hardness. WC-Cu cemented carbide exhibited much higher creep resistance than WC-Co cemented carbide, and was the same as the binderless WC-sintered body up to 1273K. [doi:10.2320/matertrans.ME200803]