State of the art: Applications of mechanically alloyed nanomaterials - A review

Nanostructured materials as a new class of engineering materials with enhanced properties and structural length scale between 1 and 100 nm can be produced by a variety of different methods. Mechanical alloying ( MA) technique is one of the processes to produce nanomaterials. This process involving milling of constituent powder in high-energy ball mills goes extensive mechanical deformation due to ball-powder-ball and ball-powder-container collisions that occur during MA. The development of strong oxide dispersion strengthened ( ODS) alloys has been the prime goal of Benjamin's group, which invented the MA technique. But, the possibility of synthesizing a variety of materials has made MA an exciting field to work in for many investigators. Mechanically alloyed nickel-based, iron-based superalloys, and aluminum-based alloys are in commercial production. The ODS Al-base alloys made by MA are found to be much superior to the traditional alloys in term of strength and hardness value even at high temperature. The mechanical alloying process attracts the attention of a large group of researchers and technologists basically because of its potential to produce a variety of materials in the simplest possible way. MA definitely has a bright future as a solid-state processing route.