Effect of cobalt content on the performance of polycrystalline diamond compacts

Cobalt was an indispensable role in the damage of a PDC cutter due to its inevitable adverse thermal effect like thermal catalysis, thermal expansion and thermal oxidation in the welding and drilling process, while the quantitative studies on its serial thermal damage effect were still seldom reported. In order to understand the damage mechanism of a PDC cutter and therefore design better products, it was quite necessary to study the roles of cobalt in the PDC cutter by a quantitative means. In present study, the total cobalt content of the PCD layer of polycrystalline diamond compacts were adjusted by blending different amount of microsized cobalt powder in the mixed diamond grains and the infiltrated cobalt from the cemented carbide cylinder during the HTHP sintering process. The sintered PDC cutters were examined by XRD, SEM, EDX, vertical lathe tests, and impact tests, and it was found that the abrasive ratios of the fabricated PDC cutters were strongly dependent on the cobalt content of sintered diamond layers. The PDC cutter without adding cobalt powder exhibited the best resistance to the abrasion, while the PDC cutters sintered by adding 4% mass of cobalt powder demonstrated the worst abrasive ratio, which was the direct proof confirming that by decreasing the content of residual cobalt in the PCD layer the resistance of the PDC cutter to the abrasion would be improved significantly. A non-destructive characterization method was adopted based on the statistical calculation was proposed by using Matlab and Image-J software to quantitatively explore the relationship between the cobalt content as well as the average size of residual cobalt in the PCD layer and the abrasion performance, which opened a new technical route for the disclosure of cobalt-dependent abrasion resistance for the PDC cutter analysis. Moreover, a cobalt-rich narrow zone was found to appear in the interface of PCD/cemented carbide, which was deduced to be the main reason to cause the delamination of PCD layer from the cemented carbide. It was also interesting to find that the percentage of added cobalt powders seemed no adverse effect on the impact performance of the PDC cutters. The conclusion of present study about the cobalt role in the PDC performance was quite good for understanding the PDC damage modes and helped for the better design and fabrication of PDC.