The importance of the cubic Boron Nitride (cBN) lies in processes of machining of ferrous metals of raised hardness, where it substitutes the diamond. Despite the cBN being surpassed by the diamond in hardness terms, it has more oxidation resistance provoked by the iron under high temperatures around 700ºC. The cBN crystals can be gotten by the synthesis through the hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) applying High Pressures and High Temperatures (HPHT), during determined time. To facilitate the transformation of hBN to cBN, there can be applied one or more catalytic, such as magnesium, lithium, barium and others. In this work the magnesium in the particle form of until 53µm was used as catalytic in the attempts of cBN synthesis. With the objective to identify the synthesis parameters (HPHT) that they make possible the cBN particle attainment, calibrations of temperature and pressure in the hydraulic press of 630 ton used in the experiments had been made. Synthesis was carried out with the same temperature and four different values of pressure 5.0; 6.0; 7.0 and 8.0 GPa, for 5 minutes. After the synthesis, images had been gotten for Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) of each broken sample, what it showed some formations of cBN.
cubic boron nitride; synthesis; high pressure; high temperature
