Friction and wear performances of hot filament chemical vapor deposition multilayer diamond films coated on silicon carbide under water lubrication

Tribological properties of chemical vapor deposition (CVD) diamond films greatly affect its application in the mechanical field. In this paper, a novel multilayer structure is proposed, with which multilayer diamond films are deposited on silicon carbide by hot filament CVD (HFCVD) method. The different micrometric diamond grains are produced by adjusting deposition parameters. The as-deposited multilayer diamond films are characterized by scanning electron microscope (SEM) and white-light interferometry. The friction tests performed on a reciprocating ball-on-plate tribometer suggest that silicon carbide presents the friction coefficient of 0.400 for dry sliding against silicon nitride (Si₃N₄) ceramic counterface. With the water lubrication, the corresponding friction coefficients of silicon carbide and as-deposited multilayer diamond films further reduce to 0.193 and 0.051, respectively. The worn surfaces indicate that multilayer diamond films exhibit considerably high wear resistance.