Effects of surfactant on properties of MIM feedstock

Effects of the surfactant for improving the properties of MIM feedstock were investigated. Feedstocks were prepared by 17-4PH stainless steel(SS) powder and paraffin wax-based binder containing different contents of stearic acid(SA) as the surfactant. The viscosity of the feedstock decreases significantly when the SA is added. Besides, the wetting angle of the binder against the 17-4PH SS powder decreases greatly and the critical solid loading increases with the adding of the SA. Fourier transformation infrared spectroscopy(FTIR) analysis was used to prove the interaction between the SA and the 17-4PH SS powder. Chemical bonding is found on the surface of 17-4PH SS powder after mixing and it helps a lot to enhance the interacting force between the binder and the powder. Then an adsorbing model was adopted to estimate the least content of the surfactant that formed a monolayer adsorption on the mono-sized spherical powder (with smooth surface). The least content of the surfactant is calculated to be 0.19%. Whereas, the experiments indicate that about 5% is the optimal value to improve the properties of the feedstock. The reason may come from two aspects: firstly, the powders used in current experiment are not all mono-sized spheres and the coarse surface of the powder has a great effect on the adsorptive capacity of the powder; secondly, multilayer adsorption is likely to occur on the powder surface, which will also increase the adsorptive capacity.