lucky lab accident yields new recipe for diamond coating

By MALCOLM W.
BROWNEMARCH 12,1996 this is a digital version of an article from The Times Print Archive, before it began to be published online in 1996.
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Workers at a small metallurgical company inadvertently replaced the gas they intended to use to harden the tool with the wrong gas, and stumbled upon a potentially valuable method of coating the object with a hard diamond film.
Experts trying to understand why and how this approach works warn that it has not yet proven its value in industrial processing.
But if new diamonds
Material experts say coating technology has proven as cheap, fast and effective as its inventors say, and it could revolutionize the manufacture of machine tools, car engines, ships, beverage cans, etc.
Although the discovery was discovered two years ago, it has not been reported in the Journal of Science, and information about the discovery is mainly disseminated through word of mouth.
Nevertheless, it has stirred the excitement of potential users, including the armed forces, the automotive and packaging industries.
The discovery of the new method is Pravin Mistry, 43 years old. year-
An old British metallurgical scientist founded QQC, a small private engineering company.
In Dearborn, Michigan.
As an affiliate of Turchin Inc.
A machine tool manufacturer. Mr.
Mistry\'s company specializes in the application of coatings for industrial objects, and Sloto gives the ideal performance.
\"This is an interesting example of technology leading science . \"
He is in charge of the diamond and Related Materials Center at Penn State University.
\"There is no doubt that this guy is coating all sorts of things with diamonds, and doing it at an amazing speed and at a good speed without scientists imagining it would work.
Advertising is part of Mr.
Mistry\'s approach includes four powerful and fine-tuned laser beams that interact when they scan the surface of an object when it is coated. As Mr.
Mistry explained that scanning takes place in a gas environment, and the high temperature in the place where the laser gathers breaks down some gases into charged plasma.
The laser also evaporated a very thin layer of the coated object. Dr.
Roy, who is studying the process at Penn State University, believes that a chemical reaction between the surface of the object and the gas ionization atom forms a super bond.
Sir, by continuing to deposit atoms in hot gas on coated objects, the thickness of the coating can be quickly increased to a thickness of half an inchMistry said.
\"This technology can be used to produce many different kinds of coatings other than diamonds and can be designed according to special requirements,\" Dr. Roy said.
\"It takes only about a minute to apply a coating, and you can use several coatings on the same object.
For example, you may want to coat a part of the gear to harden it, while coating another part of the gear for corrosion resistance. \"In 1994, Mr.
Mistry\'s team found this when using this interactive laser technology to apply a hard two boron titanium coating to the surface of an aluminum object.
A mistake in their program laid the foundation for a surprise that could prove very profitable for all involved: someone accidentally replaced the nitrogen used in the process with carbon dioxide.
A dense coating formed quickly, but does not include the expected two boron titanium.
It turned out to be diamond.
The news of the discovery quickly spread among material experts, who were surprised to find
It is reported that Mistry\'s technology of coating objects with diamond films is 1,000 times faster than existing diamonds
Coating technology.
In addition, the Mistry process promises to form a particularly strong bond between the coating and the metal objects that apply the coating, which is an important requirement for hardened machine tools.
The United States Navy, Army and Air Force, the Department of advanced research projects of the Ministry of Defense and automobile companies are all interested in the developments.
\"I saw someone using Mr.
I can verify that the coating is Diamond, \"said Dr.
Robert Pohanka, director of materials research, Arlington Naval Research Office, Virginia.
\"I visited the factory and saw the equipment.
\"The key problem with advertising is cost,\" he said \".
\"Using this technology, can you make things at a reasonable cost?
How big can an object be painted?
How strong is the combination between the object and the coating?
These questions must be answered. \"Mr.
Mistry said in an interview that the technology is still in its infancy, but all indications are that the coating is cheap and can be applied under tightly controlled shapes and thicknesses, to objects
If the Mistry process does not meet expectations, Dr.
Pohanka says it can be used to apply a hard coating on gears and bearings to cover corroded pumps and other machinery
Scratch-proof coating protects the windows of combat vehicles from scratches and erosion, and hardens engine components to reduce wear. Dr.
Roy\'s research team has looked into the scientific basis of chemical processes, and he believes it can be used almost like a brush to apply a coating of diamonds or other special materials. \"Mr.
He said: \"Mistry\'s devices are operated by computer-controlled robots, because this method is very flexible, maybe one day, it is possible to cover the entire hull with a film made of diamonds or other protective materials. \"Mr.
Mistry has applied for more than 30 patents, covering all aspects of his invention, and several have been approved, he said.
He predicts that his method will be widely used in special tools and molds that can process aluminum and other metals without the need for liquid coolant.
Coolant that removes heat from the processed object can cause environmental problems.
It is expensive to scrub every trace of coolant from a metal object, especially when the object is an aluminum beverage tank that must be absolutely clean.
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Coating tools, sir.
Mistry says \"dry processing\" to help aluminum engine blocks, beverage cans and many other things \".
In traditional processing, the formed object will heat up, but in dry processing, most of the heat is taken away by flying debris and debris, making the processed object relatively cool.
But to work, the tool must be very hard and the diamond coating is a way to achieve the necessary hardness.
For more than a decade, tool manufacturers and other manufacturers have passed a chemical vapor deposition (C. V. D.
Usually, objects to be coated are placed in the containing height-pressure, high-
Temperature mixture of methane or other carbon
Base gas and hydrogen.
The gas is heated by hot filaments or radio waves to decompose methane into carbon and hydrogen atoms.
Charged carbon atoms settle on the object to be coated, many of which are arranged in the form of crystal diamonds, not in the form of graphite, which is another form of crystal of carbon.
The chemical gas phase method is relatively simple and cheap
Pressure Technology for the manufacture of synthetic diamonds since the 1950s.
In the past decade, many companies have tried carbon.
Steam diamond film as scratch-proof coating for super-hard sheath of sunglasses and steel machine tools, hot-
Conducting radiator for flat panel electronic chip
Panel Video Display and rigid speaker for speakersFrequency sound.
Some of these films are mainly composed of diamonds, while other coatings known as \"Diamond-like\" are mainly composed of graphite and some diamond crystals mixed together.
But even though dozens of companies produce carbon
Steam diamond coatings are used in a variety of products with uneven levels of success, and technological advances are much slower than innovators would like.
According to the doctor, one reason is thatWilliam F.
Banholzer, engineering manager for GE\'s supergrinding project, believes that many \"diamond-like\" films lack the strength and adhesion of effective hardening tools.
They tend to fall off the metal.
\"Chemical vapor deposition technology has been widely publicized . \"
Banholzer said: \"Now, most big companies have canceled their C. V. D. programs.
\"Another factor that has hindered the development of synthetic diamond materials is the sharp decline in world industrial diamond prices over the past five years.
The cheapest industrial diamond abrasive, known as the \"loose chip abrasive\", is heavily used by Chinapressure, high-
The diamonds cost only 20 cents per carat. \"Mind you,\" Dr.
\"I don\'t want to let him down, and I don\'t want to let him down.
Mistry or someone else who works in this area, but we haven\'t seen his technology really valuable in business.
Cost, performance, adhesion and ease of production are all subject to evaluation.
\"In pure crystal form, most of the carbon is graphite, which consists of molecular slices of elemental carbon atoms linked together in a plane and arranged in a pattern similar to chicken shreds.
Graphite is a smooth black substance that is used, among other things, as a lubricant and as a manufacturing pencil.
However, when under great pressure, the space between the carbon atoms in the graphite is compressed, forcing the atoms to rearrange into a tight eight-Double sided Crystal-
Crystal of diamond
Most natural diamond crystals are a black mixture of diamond and graphite used as an abrasive.
But occasionally diamonds appear in the form of pure crystal, transparent gems.
Advertising natural diamonds is believed to be caused by tremendous pressure and high temperatures in the crust and deep crust.
Whether natural or synthetic, diamonds have unique properties in all other known substances;
Diamond is the hardest material known, and it has the highest refractive index (
Measure of the degree of bending light of the material)
, It conducts heat faster than anything else, even faster than copper.
Diamonds can also be used as semiconductors, and it is proposed to replace silicon as a base material for electronic chips.
Although several claimants claimed to have synthesized the first diamonds, the first large gem-quality diamonds were produced by GE, which still produced them.
In the 1950s, G. E.
The engineers made a giant press imitating natural diamonds.
The process of forming graphite under great pressure and temperature.
Although the technology is very expensive, it has produced high-quality, large-size gem diamonds. But to G. E.
\"Gems are not business;
They are an aspect of sociology.
Banholzer said.
\"The wife does not seem to accept the idea that artificial gem diamonds are the same in substance and quality as natural diamonds.
The price of synthetic and natural gemstone diamonds is roughly the same--
About $2,000 per carat
But gems will never be a huge market for us.
\"For manufacturers, however, a firmly bonded diamond coating is able to extend the life of a drill bit, mold, saw or axle by thousands of times, which will be its gold weight.
This coating may eventually be within reach.
A version of this article appears on page C00001, national edition, March 12, 1996, with the title: The lucky lab accident produced a new formula for the diamond coating.