High-Hardness Diamond Composite Consolidated by Spark Plasma Sintering

A high‐hardness diamond‐based composite was synthesized by spark plasma sintering (SPS) under 100 MPa, using SiC‐coated diamond powder prepared via chemical vapor deposition (CVD). SiC layers 20–40 nm were uniformly deposited on diamond powders by a rotary CVD technique. The SiC‐coated diamond powder was consolidated with SiO powder by SPS at the sintering temperature of 1873 K, resulting in the formation of fully compacted mosaic microstructure with the Vickers hardness of 36 GPa.