Polishing of Diamond Materials : Mechanisms, Modeling and Implementation

Diamond has a unique combination of properties, such as the highest hardness and thermal conductivity among any known material, high electrical resistivity, a large optical band gap and a high transmission, good resistance to chemical erosion, low adhesion and friction, and extremely low thermal expansion coefficient. As such, diamond has been a desirable material in a wide range of applications in mechanical, chemical, optical, thermal and electrical engineering. In many of the cases, the surface of a diamond component or element must have a superior finish, often down to a surface roughness of nanometers. Nevertheless, due to its extreme hardness and chemical inertness, the polishing of diamond and its composites has been a sophisticated process.

Polishing of Diamond Materials will provide a state-of-the-art analysis, both theoretically and experimentally, of the most commonly used polishing techniques for mono/poly-crystalline diamond and chemical vapour deposition (CVD) diamond films, including mechanical, chemo-mechanical, thermo-chemical, high energy beam, dynamic friction and other polishing techniques. The in-depth discussions will be on the polishing mechanisms, possible modelling, material removal rate and the quality control of these techniques. A comparison of their advantages and drawbacks will be carried out to provide the reader with a useful guideline for the selection and implementation of these polishing techniques.

Polishing of Diamond Materials will be of interest to researchers and engineers in hard materials and precision manufacturing, industry diamond suppliers, diamond jewellery suppliers and postgraduate students in the area of precision manufacturing.

Yiqing Chen is Research Fellow at the School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, the University of New South Wales, Australia. She has been conducting research on polishing of diamond materials since her PhD study in 2003 at The University of Sydney, and has 25 publications in this field. Her research focuses on the characterization of advanced materials and development of advanced methods for processing of difficult-to-machine materials. She has received 7 academic and research awards, including a best paper and a best presentation award in two prestigious international conferences, and has a worldwide patent in “Method and apparatus for polishing diamond and diamond composites”.

Liangchi Zhang is Scientia Professor, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Australian Professorial Fellow at the School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Australia. He is Elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering. Prior to UNSW, he has worked in the University of Cambridge, UK, National Mechnical Engineering Laboratory, MITI Japan, and the University of Sydney, Australia. His research involves both fundamentals and technological development in the interdisciplinary areas of precision and nano manufacturing such as free form microlens arrays; bio-manufacturing of prostheses such as hip joint implants; nanomechanics and nanomaterials such as nanotubes, graphene and nanocomposites; characterisation of materials such as diamond, silicon, ceramics, polymers and composites; tribology of materials such as mixed lubrication and friction and wear of nano/micro/macro-scale sliding systems; and solid mechanics and computational mechanics such as solutions to elasticity and pasticity of advanced materials and their constitutive modeling. Liangchi Zhang has published extensively his research outcomes in over 450 publications including 5 books and many patents. The application of his technologies has led to considerable economic benefits. He is the recipient of about 30 prizes, awards, honours and distinctions including the “Distinguished Achievement Award in Machining Technology (2000)”, the “B-HERT Award for Best Research and Development Collaboration (2007)”, and the “UNSW Inventor of the Year (2011)”.