Mechanical Property and Characterization on Diamond Films Deposited on WC-Co Substrates

Cutting tools of WC-Co are widely used in cutting field. Nevertheless, its wear resistance and lifetime are not qualified for the high performance cutting. Therefore, diamond films are deposited on WC-Co substrates to overcome its disadvantages. In this paper we investigate the effects of the pretreatment on substrates and as-deposited WC-Co samples by using a hot filament chemical vapor deposition (HFCVD) reactor. Prior to deposition, the WC-Co substrates were submitted to surface roughening by Murakami reagent and to surface binder removal by Caro’ acid with varied durations. Surface roughness Ra determined by AFM varied from 110 to 279 nm. The diamond films are characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Raman spectroscopy, whose results present a sharp peak at 1336 cm-1 indicating sp3 diamond. The adhesion between the diamond films and substrates was evaluated by pull-off tests with the highest adhesion strength is 26.92 MPa. Cracked interface is characterized between diamond films and substrates, using SEM and energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) to analyze the adhesion performance.