Abstract
The prospect of obtaining good adhesion of diamond films onto steel substrates is highly exciting because the achievement of this objective will open up numerous new applications in industry. However, a major problem with depositing diamond onto steel is high diffusion of carbon into steel at chemical vapor deposition (CVD) temperatures leading to a very low nucleation density and cementite (Fe3C) formation. Therefore, the study of the nucleation and growth processes is timely and will yield data that can be utilized to get a better understanding of how adhesion can be improved. This work focuses on the adhesion of thin diamond films onto high speed steel previously coated with various interlayers such as ZrN, ZrC, TiC, and TiC/Ti(C,N)/TiN. The role of seeding on nucleation density and the effect of diamond film thickness on stress development and adhesion has been investigated using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), x-ray diffraction (XRD), and Raman spectroscopy (RS). The main emphasis in this study lies with TiC, which for the first time proved to be a suitable layer for diamond CVD on high-speed steel (HSS). In fact, different from other interlayer materials investigated, no delamination was observed after 3 h of CVD at 650 °C when TiC was used. Nevertheless, the increase of diamond film thickness on TiC-coated HSS substrates led to delamination of small areas. This occurrence suggests that there was a distribution of adhesive toughness values at the diamond/TiC interface with the stress development being dependent on film thickness.
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Polini, R., Pighetti Mantini, F., Braic, M. et al. Effects of Ti- and Zr-based interlayer coatings on hot-filament chemical vapor deposition of diamond on high-speed steel. J. of Materi Eng and Perform 15, 201–207 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1361/105994906X95887
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1361/105994906X95887