Characteristics of 14Cr-ODS ferritic alloy fabricated by mechanically alloying and microwave sintering

14Cr-ODS ferritic alloys were fabricated by microwave sintering and conventional vacuum sintering. The results showed that the sintering time could be reduced and the sintering temperature could be decreased effectively by adoption of microwave sintering. The tensile strength of the alloy microwave sintered at 1250 °C and the alloy vacuum sintered at 1350 °C were 691.4 MPa and 521.5 MPa respectively. The superior strength of microwave sintered one would be attributed to finer grain size, which was resulted from the shorter sintering time and lower sintering temperature. The elongation of microwave sintered alloy was worse than that of the vacuum sintering one. Nano-oxide precipitates were dispersed homogeneously in the Fe-based matrix, and their size was mostly ranged from several nm to more than 20 nm.