Preparation and Properties of Porous Diamond Preforms

Abstract

A binder comprising of 60% PW (paraffin wax), 10% HDPE (high-density polyethylene), 12% PS (polystyrene), 13% PPR (random-polypropylene), and 5% SA (stearic acid) has been selected and successfully employed to fabricate the diamond preforms possessing high strength and well shape retention capability. Various effects of processing methods on the properties of the diamond preforms have been investigated. The results indicate that the binder consisting of PW-HDPE-PS-PPR-SA possesses excellent comprehensive rheological properties and is more appropriate as the organic vehicle for fabricating porous diamond preform. It has been evaluated that the mixing of 140m size diamond particles with 20m size diamond particles in the weight proportion of 3:1 provides the best particle size distribution for preparation of diamond preforms. It is also observed that impregnation of preform with 1.7wt (SiO2)% water glass and subsequently heat-treated in vacuum at 800°C for 40min yields in high strength (with the strength of 7.1 MPa) diamond preform for infiltration. The strengthened preforms have been observed to possess an excellent shape maintaining capability. It is concluded that the diamond-copper composites fabricated by utilizing this high strength preform through hot-press infiltration method have high relative density of 96.4% and thermal conductivity of 300W.m-1.K-1.