Formation of Nanostructural Materials Induced by Mechanical Processings (<I>Overview</I>)

Mechanical alloying (MA) was firstly developed to synthesize metallic matrix composite by mechanically incorporating preformed oxide and or carbide particles into a metallic matrix. A consecutive compaction process is applied to obtain bulk materials. During MA, powders are repeatedly welded, fractured and rewelded in a high energy mill leading to an intimate mixing on a nano/micro-scale with the possible formation of far from equilibrium phases. The versatility of MA is well known; high volume, low energy mills can be used to commercially produced dispersion strengthened Al, Ni and other transition metal alloys. Various intermetallics and inorganic compounds (amorphous and/or nanocrystalline) have been synthesized by using higher energy mills which have been specially developed in some cases. Mechanical alloying, it appears, as suggested by T. H. Courtney et al., is the Alladin’s lamp of powder processing. All the published works have shown that the reaction and end products of the MA process strongly depend on the milling conditions. As a consequence, it is obvious that an improved understanding of the dynamics of MA process is required to gain a full appreciation of the industrial potential of the technique for synthesizing materials. Recently, M. Abdellaoui and E. Gaffet have shown that the crystal to amorphous phase transition (at least in the case of the model Ni10Zr7) only depends on the injected mechanically power, allowing a direct comparison among experiments performed using distinct type of milling apparatus (planetary milling machine, horizontal apparatus). An alternative method has been recently proposed by N. Malhouroux-Gaffet and E. Gaffet, for the solid state synthesis of disilicide powders exhibiting a wide contamination during the direct MA preparation: the mechanically activated annealing process (M2AP). Such a M2AP method has been applied to the synthesis of FeSi2, MoSi2, WSi2 compounds. Such a method appears as being a well suitable one for the low temperature synthesis of refractory nanomaterials. Recent applications have been successfully performed to mechanically activated sintering (MAS).