Interdiffusion between copper and nickel powders and sintering map development during spark plasma sintering

An investigation into spark plasma sintering was performed using Cu-Ni powder blends. Pucks were sintered between 700 and 900 °C. Isolated copper particles were analyzed by energy-dispersive spectroscopy. Compositional maps and diffusion coefficients showed that diffusion was uniform in all directions, while activation energies demonstrated an increase in diffusion efficiency. A solution to the diffusion equation was used to model sintering times to obtain homogeneous components, given various powder blend compositions, and the results were experimentally validated.