Cemented carbides have a great industrial relevance nowadays and are composed by strategic raw materials, being one of the clearest examples the WC-Cobalt composite, which additionally have toxicity limitations. As alternative new compositions are being developed with alternative metals and alloys like Iron and Nickel. In this work it is presented the influence of small amounts (< 5vol%) of well distributed metals in the sintering behavior of non/oxide ceramics. Mixtures of ceramic and metallic powders are processed in aqueous slurry controlling the colloidal conditions to ensure the highly dispersion of the different phases. The low amount of metal in the composition makes it to be considered as a sintered aid instead of a binder.
Using non-conventional sintering techniques (SPS and Hot Press) it is observed that transition metals located within the firsts groups of the transition metals shows very different influence in the sintering behavior to those located at the ending groups. For the transition metals in the right side, dilatometric studies show a reduction in the temperatures of sintering for at least 400º C with a liquid phase sintering mechanism. On the other hand, the transition metals on the left side of the table makes tungsten to react and form solid solutions and semicarbides following a solid-state sintering mechanism with not significant variation in the sintering temperatures.
 
This work has been founded by the Spanish Research Agency by project PID2019-106631GB-C41/42 (MicroMatters@AM) funded by AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by Comunidad de Madrid by project (P2018/NMT-4411)