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Nickel is a silvery-white metal that has many unique properties and is used in hundreds of thousands of products, most often as a strengthening component within other metal alloys such as chromium. It’s also an excellent conductor of both heat and electricity, and is extremely resistant to corrosion and rust.
Nickel powder is available in a variety of grades depending on the specific application. The powder is produced using a number of methods, including gas atomization condensation and the nickel carbonyl process, which are commonly known as Mond process. The morphology of the powder is determined by the method of production, which is selected based on the particle size and morphology requirements.
AMETEK manufactures high-purity nickel strip used to make electrical contacts in rechargeable batteries, fuel cells, and other critical applications. These specialized materials require precise compositional control, weldability, formability and low electrical conductivity.
The metallurgical process that produces our high-purity nickel strip involves rolling a mixture of elemental blends into heavy-gauge metal and then controlled atmosphere sintering (also called powder compaction). The result is a solid strip with metallic bonds between the nickel particles, which are stronger than those between atoms in bulk nickel. This is a very difficult, time-consuming and expensive process.
During the sintering stage, pure nickel atoms are bombarded with oxygen molecules to convert them into a metal-nitrogen compound. These nitrogen atoms are then attracted to the positive electrical charge of the nickel and form a conductive mass that’s sintered under pressure. The resulting product is called “wrought powder metallurgy strip” or simply, wPMS. The wPMS produced by AMETEK is highly sought after due to its superior conductivity, homogeneity, micro-cleanliness and close compositional control.