Characterization of polycrystalline cBN compacts sintered without any additives

Sintered cubic boron nitride (cBN) is widely used in various industrial applications because of its extreme wear and corrosion resistance, thermal and electrical properties. Conventional cBN sintered compacts contain binder materials and the binder materials remarkably affect their mechanical and thermal properties. In this work, polycrystalline cBN (PcBN) compacts were sintered on WC-16 wt.%Co substrates without any sintering agent at static high pressure of 5.0 GPa and temperatures of 1550–1750°C for 3–20 min. Chemical reactions between cBN and substances infiltrated from the substrates occurred during the high pressure and high temperature (HPHT) sintering process. Reaction products and their contents strongly depended on the sintering temperatures and heat treatment times according to the X-ray diffraction (XRD) observations. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis showed that some samples sintered under some specific conditions had plenty of cBN-to-cBN bonding among cBN grains and homogeneous microstructures. We also found that the formation of the cBN-to-cBN bonding in the samples had given rise to an improvement in cutting performance.