Abstract
Fine-grained tungsten carbide copper (WC-Cu) cemented carbide was sintered via spark plasma sintering at 1773 K using a fine WC powder with a mean particle size of 0.11 μm. 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-10 mass% Cu cemented carbide were ∼1600 and ∼10 MPa·m0.5, 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 1273 K.
