Development and application of high strength ternary boride base cermets

Reaction boronizing sintering is a novel strategy to form a ternary boride coexisting with a metal matrix in a cermet during liquid phase sintering. This new sintering technique has successfully developed world first ternary boride base cermets with excellent mechanical properties such as Mo2FeB2, Mo2NiB2 and WCoB base ones. In these cermets Mo2FeB2 and Mo2NiB2 base ones consist of a tetragonal M3B2 (M: metal)-type complex boride as a hard phase and a transition metal base matrix. The cermets have already been applied to wear resistant applications such as injection molding machine parts, can making tools, and hot copper extruding dies, etc. This paper focuses on the characteristics, effects of the additional elements on the mechanical properties and structure, and practical applications of the ternary boride base cermets.