ABSTRACT
Wear-resistant, super hard ceramic composites based on cubic boron nitride (cBN) are of great interest to industry. However, cBN is metastable under sintering conditions at normal pressure and converts into the soft hexagonal BN (hBN). Therefore, efforts are being made to avoid this process. Besides short sintering times, the use of coated cBN-particles is a way to minimize this process. Therefore, the thermal stability of TiN coated cBN powders in high purity argon and nitrogen atmospheres up to temperatures of 1600 °C was investigated by thermogravimetry, X-ray phase analysis, scanning electron microscopy and Raman spectroscopy. The TiN coating was prepared by the atomic layer deposition (ALD)-method. The investigations showed that the TiN layer reacts in Ar at T ≥ 1200 °C with the cBN and forms a porous TiB2 layer. No reaction takes place in nitrogen up to temperatures of 1600 °C. Nevertheless, the 20 and 50 nm thin coatings also undergo a recrystallization process during heat treatment up to temperatures of 1600 °C.
ABSTRACT
Cubic boron nitride (c-BN) composites produced at high pressures and temperatures are widely used as cutting tool materials. The advent of new, effective pressure-assisted densification methods, such as spark plasma sintering (SPS), has stimulated attempts to produce these composites at low pressures. Under low-pressure conditions, however, transformation of c-BN to the soft hexagonal BN (h-BN) phase can occur, with a strong deterioration in hardness and wear. In the present work, the influence of secondary phases (B2O3, Si3N4, and oxide glasses) on the transformation of c-BN was studied in the temperature range between 1100 °C and 1575 °C. The different heat treated c-BN particles and c-BN composites were analyzed by SEM, X-ray diffraction, and Raman spectroscopy. The transformation mechanism was found to be kinetically controlled solution-diffusion-precipitation. Given a sufficiently low liquid phase viscosity, the transformation could be observed at temperatures as low as 1200 °C for the c-BN-glass composites. In contrast, no transformation was found at temperatures up to 1575 °C when no liquid oxide phase is present in the composite. The results were compared with previous studies concerning the c-BN stability and the c-BN phase diagram.
