Synthesis and structural characterization of Al–B4C nano-composite powders by mechanical alloying

This paper consists of two parts. In the first part, attrition milling of commercially available (0.7 μm) boron carbide (B4C) particles was optimized to prepare B4C nano-particles. In the second part of the study, mechanical alloying was successfully employed to synthesize metal matrix composite powders with a nanocrystalline Al 6061 alloy as the matrix and B4C as the reinforcement. Different amounts of B4C particles (5 wt.% and 10 wt.%) having...