Miscellaneous Applications of Intermetallic Compounds

Abstract

So ubiquitous are intermetallic compounds (IMCs) in all areas of materials application that examples of their use in industrial, medical, consumer, and military products are almost limitless. We will in this brief discussion attempt to identify some of the more important of these applications, which we categorize as miscellaneous. These include shape-memory alloys (SMAs), gold alloys used in jewelry, dental amalgams, tribology applications, diffusion barriers in electronic devices, elevated-heat storage systems, nuclear applications, metal-matrix composites, and high damping alloys. In some cases, the IMC is present as a precipitate or dispersed particle that provides strengthening or other property modification while in other examples, the IMC is employed in bulk form.