Molten salt synthesis of tungsten carbide powder using a mechanically activated powder

Abstract A novel method for synthesizing ceramic powders in molten salt was introduced in this paper. Unlike traditional mechanochemical process, the novel method is based on mechanical alloying followed by chemical reaction in liquid phase (molten salt). The reaction temperature to synthesize tungsten carbide in molten salt was 1000 °C. Results in this paper showed that W 2 C and WC powder could be successfully synthesized by the method. Under raised reaction conditions, there was a transformation from W 2 C to WC. The mechanism of the reaction in molten salt was discussed finally.