Explosive compaction and HIPping of stoichiometric mixtures of Ni and Al (and B) powder is optimized in order to obtain fine grained NiAl− and Ni3Al(+B) intermetallics.
Starting from an appropriate mixture of pure fine Ni− and fine Al− (and B) powders fine nickel-aluminides are produced due to a selfpropagation high temperature synthesis during processing. HIPping experiments are done also on spherical Ni-coated Al-powders. The specimens are characterized by metallography and the homogeneity of the final product is controlled by microanalytical methods.