a variety of ways in a preferred embodiment each particle is coated with a coating material in order to substantially decrease the inter particle forces attracting the particles to one another fig4 is a flowchart illustrating one embodiment of a general work flow 400 for enhancing the flowability of a powder by coating the particles with a coating material at step 402 the powder is provided as a plurality of particles having an initial level of inter particle forces between each particle the process of the present invention can apply to various types of particles including oxides and non oxides at step 404 the powder is disposed in a solvent preferably within a container the solvent comprises a coating material in a preferred embodiment the coating material is organic and is a surfactant the specific chemical makeup of the coating material depends on the chemical makeup of the powder particles for non oxide particles such as borides carbides nitrides and bare metals sorbitan monooleate is preferably used as the coating material for oxide particles such as silica the coating material is preferably selected from the group consisting of trialkoxysilane alkyltrialkoxysilane trialkylalkoxysilane trialkyldimethylaminosilane and trialkylchlorosilane octyltriethoxysilane can also be used to coat oxide particles and works particularly well with y 2 o 3 however it is contemplated that a variety of other coating materials may be used for either oxide or non oxide particles while different concentrations of the coating material can be employed the coating material preferably accounts for a small percentage of the solvent while the rest of the solvent is formed from solvent materials known in the art such as water alcohols ethanol methanol etc and hydrocarbons toluene cyclohexane etc in a preferred.