In situ synthesis of core-shell W-Cu nanopowders for fabricating full-densified and fine-grained alloys with dramatically improved performance

In this work, a one-step thermal plasma synthesis route was developed to construct core-shell W-Cu nanoparticles with size about 30 nm. As synthesized nanocomposite powders address the issues of homogeneous elemental distribution and short diffusion distance for Cu to form network around W grains, facilitating fast densification with uniform microstructure and suppressed W grain growth. As a result, compact with high relative density of 99.31% and grain size of 260 nm was obtained at low temperature of 1100 °C, further led to the recorded hardness of 562 Vickers-hardness (Hv) and electrical conductivity of 54.32% International Annealed Copper Standard (IACS), respectively.