Mechanical alloying

Mechanical alloying (MA) is a solid-state powder processing technique involving repeated cold welding, fracturing, and re-welding of blended powder particles in a high-energy ball mill to produce a homogeneous material. Originally developed to produce oxide-dispersion strengthened (ODS) nickel- and iron-base superalloys for applications in the aerospace industry, MA has now been shown to be capable of synthesizing a variety of equilibrium and non-equilibrium alloy phases starting from blended elemental or pre-alloyed powders. The non-equilibrium phases synthesized include supersaturated solid solutions, metastable crystalline and quasicrystalline phases, nanostructures, and amorphous alloys. One consideration that should be avoided is powder contamination.