Fretting wear and electrochemical corrosion of well-adhered CVD diamond films deposited on steel substrates with a WC–Co interlayer

Diamond films have been grown on carbon steel substrates by hot-filament chemical vapour deposition methods. A Co-containing tungsten-carbide (WC–Co) coating prepared by high velocity oxy-fuel spraying was used as an intermediate layer on the steel substrates to minimize the early formation of graphite (and thus growth of low quality diamond films) and to enhance the diamond film adhesion. The effects of the WC–Co interlayer on nucleation, quality, adhesion, tribological behaviour and electrochemical corrosion of the diamond film were investigated. The diamond films exhibit excellent adhesion under Rockwell indentation testing (1500 N load) and when subjected to high-speed, high-load, long-time reciprocating dry sliding ball-on-flat wear tests against a Si3N4 counterface in ambient air (500 rpm, 200 N, 300,000 cycles). A WC–Co interlayer with appropriate chemical pretreatment is shown to play an important role in improving the nucleation, quality and adhesion of the diamond film, relative to that shown by substrates without such pretreatment.