Microstructural and mechanical properties of spark plasma sintered TiCrC nanocarbide for tools application

In this work, TiCrC nanocarbide was consolidated via spark plasma sintering (SPS) from TiCrC nanopowder prepared via mechanical alloying (MA). The microstructure, elemental compositions, and morphology of the prepared samples were investigated using x-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (SEM/EDX), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). The mechanical properties of the sintered (Ti,Cr)C nanocarbide were also studied. XRD studies of the bulk samples show the presence of (Ti,Cr)C and a small amount of Cr₃C₂and graphite. SEM study reveals the presence of transgranular cleavage in fracture surfaces and the shape of grains is partially rounded. TEM analysis shows that the SPS process leads to the increase in grain size with retention of nanoscale. The optimized SPS parameters were a pressure of 80 MPa, a sintering temperature of 1800 °C and a holding time of 5 min. Results reveal that TiCrC nanocarbide also has an excellent mechanical properties achieving microhardness, relative density, fracture toughness, and compressive strength of 28 GPa, 98.51%, 6.5 MPa m^1/2, and 2290 MPa, respectively. Finally, our study shows that the prepared TiCrC nanocarbide can be used for cutting tools without loss of mechanical strength.