Cobalt-Based Alloys

Some materials fail loudly; most fail quietly — ground down by abrasion, softened by heat, or pitted by a corrosive stream. Cobalt-based alloys exist for exactly these battles. Built on a cobalt matrix fortified with chromium, tungsten, molybdenum and nickel, they hold their hardness, geometry and surface integrity long after conventional steels, and many nickel grades, have given up.

Eata Energy supplies cobalt-based alloy raw materials for research and industrial programs of every scale: gas-atomized spherical powders, cast and wrought bars, sheets and strips, hardfacing consumables, and precision sputtering targets. If your project fights wear, heat or corrosion, this is the material family worth specifying — and we are ready to help you specify it.

Spherical cobalt-based alloy powder prepared for additive manufacturing and thermal spray feedstock.

What Are Cobalt-Based Alloys?

In a cobalt-based alloy, cobalt is not a minor addition — it is the foundation, typically the largest single constituent of the composition. Chromium, generally present at 20–30 wt%, builds a self-repairing Cr₂O₃ film that shields the surface from oxidation and hot corrosion. Tungsten and molybdenum dissolve into the matrix and pin the lattice against thermal softening, while carbon — tuned from trace levels in ductile wrought grades to several percent in hardfacing compositions — precipitates hard M₇C₃, M₆C and M₂₃C₆ carbides that give these alloys their legendary abrasion resistance. Nickel, where present, stabilizes the ductile face-centered cubic phase and improves toughness.

Few alloy systems pack so much into one material: resistance to abrasive, adhesive and erosive wear; strength that persists well past 800 °C; tolerance of sulfidizing, chloride-bearing and marine atmospheres; and — unlike many precipitation-hardened nickel superalloys — genuinely forgiving weldability. That combination explains why, decade after decade, engineers keep returning to cobalt alloys for valve trim, hot-section turbine hardware and cutting edges.

Key Properties at a Glance

• Wear resistance that sets the benchmark. In ASTM G65 dry-sand abrasion testing, Stellite-type grades typically lose only 20–40 mg — a fraction of the 100–200 mg that 300-series stainless steels sacrifice under identical conditions.
• Hot hardness. Carbide-rich cobalt alloys retain useful hardness at red heat, where hardened tool steels have already softened and begun to wear rapidly.
• Oxidation resistance up to about 1,095 °C. Haynes 188 uses a small lanthanum addition to anchor its protective Cr₂O₃ scale through repeated thermal cycling.
• Thermal fatigue endurance. Hot-gas-path hardware made from cobalt superalloys survives thousands of heating–cooling swings between roughly 600 °C and 1,100 °C.
• Natural anti-galling behavior. The cobalt matrix has a low stacking-fault energy, so sliding surfaces resist adhesive metal transfer and seizure.
• Broad corrosion resistance. High chromium levels stand up to sour gas, seawater and many mineral acids; MP35N additionally resists chloride stress-corrosion cracking and hydrogen embrittlement even at very high strength levels.

Grades We Commonly Supply

Cobalt-based superalloy bars and ingots, stocked in standard sizes and cut to order.

Product Forms Available

• Spherical alloy powders — gas-atomized with high sphericity, low oxygen content and tight particle-size cuts such as 15–45 μm and 15–53 μm; suited to laser powder bed fusion, electron beam melting, directed energy deposition, thermal spray and powder metallurgy.
• Bars, rods and ingots — cast, forged or hot-rolled, with custom diameters and cut-to-length service.
• Sheets, plates and strips — supplied solution-annealed; cold-rolled condition available on request.
• Wires and welding consumables — hardfacing rods, GTAW/GMAW filler wire and thermal spray wire for overlay and repair work.
• Sputtering targets and machined discs — custom diameters, thicknesses and backing-plate bonding for thin-film deposition and surface engineering.
• Custom cast and machined parts — produced to your drawing, from prototype pieces to batch quantities.

Mirror-polished cobalt alloy sputtering targets for thin-film and surface-engineering applications.

Explore Our Cobalt-Based Alloy Range

Customers frequently reach this page while searching for the materials below — every one of them is available for quotation:

• Cobalt Chromium Molybdenum (CoCrMo) alloy powder
• Spherical Stellite 6, Stellite 12 and Stellite 21 powders
• Cobalt Chromium Tungsten (CoCrW) alloy
• Haynes 188 (UNS R30188) sheet, bar and welding wire
• Haynes 25 / L-605 (UNS R30605) rod, wire and strip
• MP35N (UNS R30035) bar and wire
• Tribaloy T-400 and T-800 powders and components
• FSX-414 and MAR-M 509 cast alloy forms
• Cobalt-based hardfacing rods and electrodes
• Cobalt alloy sputtering targets and machined discs
• Custom cobalt alloy compositions, sizes and shapes

Where These Alloys Earn Their Keep

Aerospace and Gas Turbines

Combustor liners, transition ducts, flame holders and vane platforms live in a punishing mix of heat, oxidation and thermal cycling. Cobalt grades such as Haynes 188 and L-605 are specified here precisely because hot-corrosion resistance, thermal fatigue endurance and weld repairability matter more in these parts than absolute creep strength.

Turbine hot-section hardware remains a classic destination for cobalt-based superalloys.

Oil, Gas and Chemical Processing

Valve seats, gates, stems, cages, pump sleeves and bearings must survive galling, erosion and corrosive media at the same time. Stellite hardfacing and wrought cobalt components routinely outlast conventional alloys in sour and chloride-rich service, keeping unplanned shutdowns off the schedule.

Valve seats and sealing rings machined from cobalt alloy resist galling and corrosive attack.

Industrial Wear and Tooling

Cutting blades, extrusion and hot-forming dies, pelletizer knives, saw tips and wear strips all benefit from carbide-rich cobalt metallurgy that keeps its edge at temperature, cycle after cycle.

Additive Manufacturing and Surface Engineering

Spherical CoCrMo and Stellite-family powders feed SLM and EBM printers, laser cladding heads, and HVOF or plasma spray guns — opening the door to complex geometries and functionally graded wear surfaces that casting alone cannot deliver.

Laser powder bed fusion of cobalt alloy powder builds geometries beyond the reach of casting.

Energy and Power Generation

From hot-gas-path components in industrial gas turbines to the cobalt-chromium-molybdenum liners and nozzles now being qualified for hydrogen-fueled machines, cobalt alloys continue to support the equipment that keeps power systems running hotter, cleaner and longer.

Why Customers Stay with Eata Energy

• Verified chemistry, batch after batch. Every lot ships with spectrometric composition verification and a certificate of analysis.
• Powder quality you can measure. Sphericity, flowability, apparent and tap density, and oxygen content are controlled and reported — not assumed.
• Quantities that scale with your program. Validate a process with a research-scale pack, then move to production volumes with the same material pedigree.
• A technical conversation before a transaction. Tell us the temperature, the medium and the wear mode, and we will help you land on the right grade and form.

Custom Alloy Solutions

Catalogue grades cover most needs — but not all. Eata Energy routinely adjusts chromium, tungsten and carbon windows to tune the balance of hardness and toughness, sieves powders to non-standard size distributions, fabricates sputtering targets in special geometries, and produces small trial melts for alloy development programs. Share your service conditions or your target specification, and our team will engineer a material route to match.

Ready to specify your cobalt alloy? Send us the grade, form and quantity you have in mind, and Eata Energy will reply with a technical proposal and a quotation tailored to your application.

For Research or Industrial Raw Materials, Not For Personal Medical Use!