A Review of Binderless Polycrystalline Diamonds: Focus on the High-Pressure-High-Temperature Sintering Process

Nowadays, synthetic diamonds are easy to fabricate industrially, and a wide range of methods were developed during the last century. Among them, the high-pressure-high-temperature (HP-HT) process is the most used to prepare diamond compacts for cutting or drilling applications. However, these diamond compacts contain binder, limiting their mechanical and optical properties and their substantial uses. Binderless diamond compacts were synthesized more recently, and important developments were made to optimize the P-T conditions of sintering. Resulting sintered compacts had mechanical and optical properties at least equivalent to that of natural single crystal and higher than that of binder-containing sintered compacts, offering a huge potential market. However, pressure-temperature (P-T) conditions to sinter such bodies remain too high for an industrial transfer, making this the next challenge to be accomplished. This review gives an overview of natural diamond formation and the main experimental techniques that are used to synthesize and/or sinter diamond powders and compact objects. The focus of this review is the HP-HT process, especially for the synthesis and sintering of binderless diamonds. P-T conditions of the formation and exceptional properties of such objects are discussed and compared with classic binder-diamonds objects and with natural single-crystal diamonds. Finally, the question of an industrial transfer is asked and outlooks related to this are proposed.