The Effect of Surface Morphology on the Friction Behavior of HF-CVD Diamond Films

Abstract

Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) diamond film has long been investigated as an important coating material for a variety of mechanical components, due to its many excellent mechanical and tribological properties, e.g. extremely high hardness, low friction coefficient and excellent wear resistance. The tribological behaviors of CVD diamond films have been known to show significant dependence on both sliding environment and its surface characteristics. The investigation on the effect of sliding conditions like normal load, sliding velocity, counterpart material and lubricant have been reported extensively hi available literatures. Nevertheless, the suidies on the influence of grain size, surface roughness and homogeneity mainly concentrate on the CVD diamond film self-mated tiibosystem [1, 2]. Inadequate attention has been put on the heterogeneous contact of CVD diamond film with metal or ceramics material, which is a considerable frequently used contact type in its mechanical applications, especially for the CVD diamond coated cutting inserts or drills.