Microwave Processing of Nanostructured Materials

"In Phase I we demonstrated that Microwave Sintering of Nanostructured Powders is a commercially viable near net shape process for producing fine grained sintered materials. The proposed Phase II program will advance the technology to a state of commercialreadiness. Several areas of application, many of them of particular importance to the US Army, such as penetrators, shaped charges, transparent armors, radar domes, EM and sensor windows, and ballistic protection shields, will benefit immensely from aneconomical and large volume near net shape processing technology.In Phase I, working with our collaborators at PennState University, we demonstrated for the first time that high sintered densities and a fine grain size are obtained in a microwave furnace by using ultrafine grained powders with tailored morphologies asstarting material. The fine grained structure is advantageous in many cases, e.g. shaped charge liners. Our innovative approach is especially suited for materials which are otherwise difficult-to-consolidate, such as phase pure tungsten and aluminumoxynitride.Capitalizing on the recent progress in scaling of the microwave sintering process to large volume, combined with the ability to sinter nanocrystalline metal powders to near theoretical density, we propose (i) to scale the microwave furnace to allowsintering of large volume components with specific geometries, and (ii) to use our nanocrystalline powder-microwave sinteri