Preparation and characterization of copper-nickel bulk nanocrystals

Copper-nickel nanoparticle was directly prepared by flow-levitation method (FL) and sintered by vacuum sintering of powder (VSP) method. Several characterizations, such as transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), differential thermal analysis (DTA), and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) were used to investigate the prepared nanostructures. The results of the study show that flmethod could prepare high purity Cu-Ni nanocrystals of uniform spheres with size distribution between 20 and 90 nm. After sintering the bulk nanocrystalline copper-nickel has obvious thermal stability and the surface Webster hardness increases with the rising sintering temperature. At the temperature of 900 °C, the specimen shows higher surface Webster hardness, which is about two times of traditional materials. When the sintering temperature arrives at 1 000 °C the relative density of bulk nanocrystals can reach 97.86 percent. In this paper, the variation tendency of porosity, phase and particles size of bulk along with the changing of sintering temperature have been studied.