Regular interface zones with uniform thickness in AISI 304 stainless steel-reinforced aluminium-matrix composite have been obtained using a vacuum high-pressure diffusion-bonding technique. Extensive and intensive experiments were performed to examine the growth of interfacial compounds with the variation of hot-pressing time and temperature. In the initial stage, the overall growth rate of the interface was found to follow a parabolic law. After a certain diffusion time, the interface growth rate fell behind that predicted by the parabolic law. A modified parabolic law has been established to explain the deviation and proved to be a better model to fit the experimental data. An activation energy of 152 kJ mol(-1) was found, which was somewhat lower than that obtained by previous work. The lower value of activation energy is attributed to the pressure (70 MPa) applied during hot pressing. Energy dispersive spectroscopic analysis and microhardness measurement indicated that the interface zone consists of a mixture of intermetallic compounds Fe(Cr, Ni)Al-2, Fe(Cr, Ni)Al-3 and (Fe, Cr, Ni)(2)Al-7.