Continuing his coverage of the 2005 Plansee Seminar, Ken Brookes looks at two contrasting papers on interlocking themes - improvements to cobalt binders for hardmetals and nanoparticles. The first involves the finest possible cobalt as binder for fine or ultrafine tungsten carbide, the second comparatively thick cobalt binder layers for coarse hardmetal, but hardened and toughened by the presence of minute particles of “theta” cobalt-tungsten double carbide…