A combined plastic shaping method for powder metallurgy complex multi-material structures

Abstract

The preparation of complex metal, ceramic, and cermet multi-material structures has long been limited by processing challenges. In this study, we introduce a combined plastic shaping (CPS) method utilising feedstock that comprises thermoplastic binders and powders. In this method, feedstock, as powder or green preforms, is pre-placed in moulds and hot-pressed to generate complex multi-material structures. Overall, CPS combines various plastic-shaping techniques for the precise formation of high-resolution complex powder metallurgy (PM) multi-materials. Furthermore, we propose a co-sintering strategy based on binder filling and solid–liquid phase sintering (SLPS), successfully sintering alloy/cermet multi-materials. CPS represents an efficient approach for fabricating complex multi-material structures, and the co-sintering strategy is promising for achieving co-sintering of multi-materials.