Electroless copper plating of tungsten powders and preparation of WCu20 composites by microwave sintering

In the present work, tungsten powders coated with copper by electroless plating method, and preparation of WCu20 composites by microwave sintering with copper-coated tungsten powder as raw material. The result shows that at the situation of a temperature of 60 °C, pH value of 12-13, with formaldehyde solution (53 ml/L) as reducing agent, iron potassium cyanide solution (0.3 g/L) as stabilizer, tartaric acid potassium sodium (15 g/L) and EDTA-2Na (19 g/L) mixture solution as compound complexing agent, the thickness of surface coating was relatively uniform, which is around 0.6-1.1 μm. The WCu20 composites were fabricated by microwave sintering with copper-coated tungsten powder as raw material shows uniform microstructure distribution, relatively high density. The hardness of the WCu20 composites increased with the temperature. While the temperature of sintering at 1100 °C for 1 h, the density could be up to 15.22 g/cm3, relative density was 97.13%, which shows better properties.