Synthetic diamonds and tools based on them are science-intensive products. According to the mo-dern market defi nition, they can be attributed to the medium or high-tech industry that include aircraft, automobile and instrument engineering, pharmaceuticals, and chemical industry. One of the world centers for diamond business in Ukraine is the Bakul Institute of Superhard Materials of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. The R&D activity of the Institute is aimed at laying scientific foundations for the creation of cutting-edge technologies for processing metals and non-metals with tools made of hard alloys and superhard materials (SHM) and at developing methods and technologies for the use of new tool materials in the basic industries. The in-dustrialized countries have been more and more focusing on SHM, as the most eff ective for equip-ping tools, and this has been evidenced by the fact that now the leading industrialized economies (USA, Japan, Germany, England, Italy, France, and China) use about 80% of mined natural and manufactured synthetic diamonds. At the same time, one of the main areas of application of SHM is mechanical processing, in which about 70% of the total SHM is used.

In the previous research published in Science & Innovation journal of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine [1], we have considered im-proving the operational characteristics of high-strength synthetic diamonds AS65–AS250 for high-precision diamond ruling tools. In this re-search, we consider improving the operational characteristics of a diamond grinding tool that uses diamonds of lesser strength. Thus, AS6–АС20 diamond synthetic powders have been widely employed in diamond grinding tools in the industry for machining products made of hard alloy, ceramics, glass, and other fragile materials. The fur-ther development of modern diamond machining technologies is associated with the use of pow-ders with new unique properties, special grain morphology, and increased chemical and thermal resistance in diamond tools. Thus, one of the causes for the increased consumption of diamonds in the operation of the tool, as well as in the manufacture of some types of tools on a metal binder is oxidation of diamonds under high temperature. The development of effective methods for in-creasing the heat resistance of grinding powders made of superhard materials, including abrasive grinding powders made of synthetic diamond powders, contributes to improving the quality of grinding tools. To increase the heat resistance of diamonds, they are covered with a metal (metallization) or ceramic layer, and alloying additives of certain elements are introduced into the reaction mix used in the synthesis of diamonds. Other coating methods have also been developed to in-crease the heat resistance of diamonds, such as: glass coating, vacuum ion-plasma sputtering, epitaxial synthesis, magnetron sputtering, and liquid phase coating method. That is, modification of the surface, or coating, of diamond grains is one of the important factors influencing changes in their properties, increasing retention in the binding working layer of the grinding tool, and changing the properties of the diamond surface. It should be noted that this direction has been intensively developing. Let us further focus on modern developments in the production of various functional coatings on diamonds and the features of their influence on the modification of the surface of diamonds.

The technology of thermo-explosive synthesis can be applied to cover diamond [2]. With the use of mixed Cr/Al/B/diamond powder as a raw ma-terial, a multi-component composite coating based on CrB-AlN has been formed on the sur-face of the diamond by the thermo-explosive syn-thesis method (Fig. 1). The eff ect of the protec-tive atmosphere (N or Ar), the content of Al in the phase composition, and the microstructure of the binder and coating have been studied. The re-sults have shown that under the protection of Ar, the raw material does not undergo a thermal ex-plosion reaction. The loose and porous bulk structure can be obtained by the thermal explo-sion reaction under the protection of N. The coat-ing on the diamond surface is mainly composed of CrB and AlN and contains other by-products such as Cr5Al8 and Cr2AlB2 [2].

Metallic W-containing coatings are applied to the surface of diamond microcrystals by hot pres-sing, with the use of WO3 as a metal source [3]. The coatings formed on the diamond surface re-act with WO3 powder during hot pressing at ele-vated temperature. After processing the mix at 850 C for 15 min, WO2 and W18O49 are fi xed on the diamond surface. After treatment at 950 С (15 min), tungsten is the dominant phase of the coating. Treatment at 1150 С (15 min) leads to the formation of WC and W2C phases. There is no metallic tungsten in the coating obtained at this temperature (Fig. 2).In [4], to determine the features of the reaction of diamond with various types of metals and met-al oxides, the activation energy of the reaction between diamond and metals, as well as between diamond and metal oxides, has been calculated from the fi rst principles. For the transition metals of the fourth period of the Periodic Table of the Elements, when they react with diamond to form the corresponding metal carbides, the order of in-creasing activation energy for the metals is as fol-lows: Mn, Fe, V, Ti, Cr, Co, Ni, Zn, and Cu. And when diamond reacts with MnO, FeO, CoO, NiO

Fig. 2. Changes in the composition of the diamond surface coating as a result of temperature variation [3]
Fig. 3. Scientifi c principles of diamond surface modifi cation with SiO2 layer [8]
Fig. 4. Scientifi c principles of metal-based modifi ed diamond surface [9]
Fig. 6. The areas of coverage, which are subject to the element analysis on the surface of the grains three times modi-fi ed with В2О3

Fig. 9. Dependence of the relative reference length of the profi le of the surface machined by a wheel without diamond grain surface
modifi cation (a), by a wheel with modifi cation of the grain surface by a combination of B2O3/Al2O3 (b), and by a wheel with
modifi cation of the grain surface with NaCl (c), during grinding of a hard alloy with a productivity of 400 mm3/min