Co- and Fe-based alloys produced by powder technology are being widely used as a matrix for diamond-containing composites in cutting, drilling, grinding pplications, etc. The severe service conditions demand that the mechanical and tribological properties of these alloys be improved. Development of metal-matrix composites (MMCs) and alloys reinforced with nanoparticles is a promising way to resolve this problem. In this work, we have investigated the effect of nano-sized WC, ZrO2, Al2O3, and Si3N4 additives on the properties of sintered dispersion-strengthened Co- and Fe-based MMCs. The results show an increase in the hardness (up to 10 HRB), bending strength (up to 50%), wear resistance (by a factor of 2–10) and a decrease in the friction coefficient (up to 4-fold) of the dispersion-strengthened materials. The use of designed alloys as a binder of cutting diamond tools gave a 4-fold increment in the service life, without reduction in their cutting speed.
Superhard quarternary Ti–B–C–N films were successfully deposited on AISI 304 stainless steel substrates by a dc unbalanced magnetron sputtering technique from a Ti–B–C composite target. The relationship between microstructures and mechanical properties was investigated in terms of the nanosized crystallites∕amorphous system. The synthesized Ti–B–C–N films were characterized using x-ray diffraction (XRD), x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). These analyses revealed that our Ti–B–C–N films are composites of solid-solution (Ti,C,N)B2 and Ti(C,N) crystallites distributed in an amorphous boron nitride (BN) phase including some of carbon, CNx, B2O3 components. The hardness of the Ti–B–C–N films increased with the increase of N content up to a maximum value of approximately 45 GPa at 10 at. % N, with a subsequent decrease in hardness at higher N content. This value is considerably higher than the hardness measured in our Ti–B–C films (∼35GPa). The Ti–B–C–N(10 at .%) film also showed the highest H3∕E*2 value (∼1.7GPa) among the coatings produced. A systematic investigation of the microstructures and mechanical properties of Ti–B–C–N films prepared with various N contents is reported in this paper.
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