Enhancement of the thermal properties of silver-diamond composites with chromium carbide coating

The present work reports the enhancement of the thermal properties in Ag/diamond matrix composites reinforced with chromium carbide coated diamond particles. The coated diamond particles were characterized by x-ray diffraction, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and Raman spectra. The composites were synthesized by spark plasma sintering. The chromium carbide coating on the diamond particles resulted in composites exhibiting improved wettability and strong interfacial bonding between the diamond particles and Ag matrix. The composites with coated diamonds showed a low coefficient of thermal expansion of 8.24 × 10^?6/K and a high thermal conductivity of 695 W/mK at 60 % particle volume fraction, which greatly outperformed the composites with uncoated diamonds at the same particle volume fraction. The obtained results are useful for synthesizing Ag/diamond composites with greatly improved thermal performance.