SiC-bonded diamond material with excellent abrasive wear resistance

The wear behavior of SiC bonded diamond materials produced by liquid silicon infiltration in diamond preforms was investigated. The wear behavior in sand blasting tests (SiC abrasives, 5 bar pressure) was correlated with the microstructure. All SiC bonded diamond materials showed a wear, which was approximately 10 times less than the wear behavior of the reference SiC material. Systematic changed microstructures were created by increasing the infiltration temperature. As the infiltration temperature increases, a graphite layer is formed at the diamond-SiC interface. At the highest infiltration temperature (1670 °C), the layer thickness reaches approx. 580 nm. The results show that wear resistance is not negatively affected by the graphite layer. On the contrary, for materials with a graphite layer thickness of up to 70 nm, the wear resistance increases by up to 30 %. The wear increases again only at the highest infiltration temperature. However, this is probably caused more by the internal damage to the diamonds and not by the graphite layer at the interface.