Tribological behaviour of and fibre textured CVD diamond films under dry planar sliding contact

Abstract

<100> and <111> fibre textured diamond films are grown on SSiC sliding rings by hot filament CVD and are tribologically tested in dry planar contact under ambient air. The wear of the self-mated textured diamond coating takes place initially at protruding grains of the as-deposited micro rough diamond surface. After 10 km of dry sliding against <100> textured diamond the respective counterparts with <100> and <111> textures exhibit smoothly polished diamond faces without visible surface failures. After dry sliding against <111> textured diamond as static counterpart {100} diamond faces of isolated grains show Hertzian cone cracks and propagation of cracks preferred along {111} easy cleavage planes whereas {111} diamond faces reveal no crack propagation in substrate direction. The results are visualised in a tribo map in which the linear wear of the dynamic diamond face is plotted against the mean coefficient of friction. The best tribological behaviour in terms of low friction and little diamond wear is achieved for sliding couples with <100> fibre texture on the rotating sliding ring and <111> fibre texture on the static ring as mating diamond faces.