Intermetallic compound development for the 21st century

lntermetallic compounds have been vigorously researched for the past twenty years. As a result of these studies the fundamental behaviour of a number of transition metal aluminides and suicides is now well understood, and a number of alloys with commercially acceptable properties have been developed. Future challenges for these alloys, for example Ni3AI, TiAI and Fe3AI, are focused on the development of large-scale production routes. However, there remain a number of other intermetallic compounds, such as Laves phases, which exhibit some promising properties, but little is presently known about their intrinsic behaviour. For compounds such as these more fundamental studies are required