Miren Sarasola has received the 2005 Schunk Materials award in Prague. She has completed her doctoral thesis at the CEIT Centre in Donostia-San Sebastián and has been awarded the work developed in this thesis. The Schunk Prize, awarded by the German company Schunk Sintermetaltechnik, awards the research works in metallurgy. The prize is awarded at the European Congress of Powder Metallurgy (Euro'PM).
Sarasola and his co-workers have developed a technique to improve the quality of steels through powder metallurgy. Steel from pressed powder is of low density, not of great quality, but is a steel suitable for use in automotive.
However, in metallurgical laboratories, many techniques are being investigated to make this steel more compact. In this sense, the CEIT team has developed in Sarasola's thesis a technique based on the process of forming a liquid phase. The steel is heated in an oven and the metal is liquefied, but not at all, obtaining a solid phase and a liquid. This process allows controlling that the density of the steel when cooling is high.
The CEIT research team has already won three awards for steel research.