The effect of ruthenium additions on the hardness, toughness and grain size of WC–Co

Abstract This paper reports the results of a systematic investigation into some of the effects of ruthenium additions to WC–Co. The results show that the hardness of WC–Co increases and the toughness decreases with increasing the ruthenium content and that ruthenium is a weak inhibitor of WC grain growth. Ruthenium has been found to improve the abrasion resistance of WC–Co on account of the hardening of the binder phase.