Superabrasive tool surfaces embedded with diamond grits are of great technical importance for high efficiency machining of metals, ceramics or composite materials [1, 2]. However, their applications are restricted because of thermal degradation of the diamond [3] during active brazing and brittle reaction products. Therefore, it is imperative to understand and control the microstructure and process conditions during active brazing. The presence of a interfacial layer of TiC has often been reported [4-8]. However, a direct investigation of the interfacial reactions is hard to obtain because of the difficulty to prepare a sample of the relatively soft metallic matrix and the diamond grits of ultimate hardness. Nowadays, the availably of focused ion beam (FIB) instruments allows the preparation of such difficult to prepare materials combinations. This opens the possibility for a close-up investigation of the decisive interface reactions and microstructural changes on the nanometer level. First results of such investigations are described in this paper.
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