Diamonds can now be a coating formulator’s best friend too. It is one of the most extraordinary materials, with physical properties at the top end of most charts, particularly hardness and thermal conductivity. Those properties are now available to the coatings industry.
The idea is quite simple. Because the properties of diamond are so different than those of most other materials, it only takes a small loading of nanoscale diamond particles to create a valuable shift in the properties of existing materials. Measured improvements of up to 60% in surface coating properties such as wear resistance, coefficient of friction and thermal conductivity are obtained from adding just a few percent by weight of nanodiamond material, and in some cases as little as 0.1%.