Patent ID: 7416697

Claim:
A method for preparing an article of a base metal alloyed with an alloying element, comprising the steps of preparing a precursor compound by the step of providing a chemically reducible nonmetallic base-metal precursor compound of a base metal; providing a chemically reducible nonmetallic alloying-element precursor compound of an alloying element, wherein the alloying element is thermophysically melt incompatible with the base metal, and thereafter mixing the base-metal precursor compound and the alloying-element precursor compound to form a compound mixture; thereafter chemically reducing the precursor compound to a metallic alloy, without melting the metallic alloy, wherein the step of preparing or the step of chemically reducing includes the step of adding an other additive constituent; and thereafter consolidating the metallic alloy to produce a consolidated metallic article, without melting the metallic alloy and without melting the consolidated metallic article, wherein the step of preparing includes the step of furnishing the other additive constituent as an element, mixture of elements, or a compound and mixing the other additive constituent with the precursor compounds, and wherein the precursor compounds are reduced in the step of chemically reducing but the element, mixture of elements, or compound containing the other additive constituent is not reduced in the step of chemically reducing, or wherein the step of chemically reducing includes a step selected from group consisting of mixing solid particles comprising the other additive constituent with the metallic alloy, depositing from a gaseous phase the other additive constituent on a surface of the metallic alloy, and depositing from a liquid phase the other additive constituent on a surface of the metallic alloy.