SBIR Phase I: Nanocrystalline Diamond Coated Cutting Tools

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will develop the process necessary to bring nano-diamond coating technology to the cutting tool market. The technical objective of producing a commercial size lot of nano-diamond coated cutting tools will be accomplished through application of the hot-filament Chemical Vapor Deposition process, which is the only economical process that produces a uniform diamond coating over several hundred square inches in a single batch operation. The technical approach will consist of migrating the current microwave-plasma CVD process to the hot-filament CVD process. Commercially, the immediate application for diamond-coated tools is machining aluminum-based metals and composites for the automotive industry. The 2001 automotive cutting-tool market for machining these materials was $780M. The potential market for applying the diamond coating to these tools is $53M in 2002 with a forecasted market growth rate of 4percent so that it is an important development.