Spherical modification of tungsten powder by particle composite system

Owing to contradiction between increasing demand of spherical tungsten powder and limitation of traditional manufacturing technology, a novel preparation method was developed to sphericize the polygonal tungsten powder by means of modification of particle composite system. Tungsten powder particles were modified by particle composite system, and detailed characterization by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was studied. Particle size distribution and function mechanism were analyzed, and the internal relationship between average diameter and processing time was discussed. The results show that the spherical tungsten powder with an average diameter of 6.41 μm is obtained from polyhedral tungsten powder with an average diameter of 7.50 μm. The spherical effect could be achieved (sharp edge angles of particles are rounded off and reshaped) when the processing time is over 30 min. The relationship between average diameter (d) and processing time can be described by the exponential decay model, which provides a good interpretation for the process of modification. The relationship between them can be expressed by the equation d = 1.87406exp(−x/8.92718) + 6.4182. The proposed method could readily enable large-scale production of spherical tungsten powder.