Preparation And Properties Of Graphene/copper Composites With Three-dimensional Interpenetrating Network Structure

Due to the merits of outstanding electron/thermal conductivity and excellent mechanical properties,copper matrix composites show broad application prospects in our daily.In order to further promote the properties of copper matrix composite,graphene,which has ultra-high mechanical and thermodynamics properties,always working as enhancement additive to enhance the Cu matrix composites and this novel composites had obtained advanced progresses,nowadays.Among the strategies of preparing graphene/Cu composites,the common one is doping method,however,the graphene tend to aggregating and even destroying the overall structure.To remedy these deficiences and further promote the properties and exploring new strategies become hot topics in research and industrial fields.Herein,we prepared a novel graphene/Cu composites successfully through chemical vapor depositing graphene on the ligament of nanoporous Cu(NPC).Firstly,the NPC is easily obtained by dealloying the raw material(CuMn alloy with Cu 33.at%and Mn 67.at%).After chemical vapor depositing the carbon atom on the surface of NPC,the graphene is easily self-growing on the ligament when the temperature cooled down quickly.The graphene/Cu composite is finally achieved by sintering and rolling treatment.In these processes,we not only research the influence of the one-step and multi-step CVD method for structure and properties of graphene,also the structure and propertiesof graphene/Cu composites and the enhancement mechanism are putting forward preliminary in this paper.As a result,three-dimensional interpenetrating network graphene/copper composites with simultaneously were fabricated through CVD method,the gas ratio and its growth condition(temperature and time)have great effect on the quality of the graphene,can get a good quality continuous graphene structure after the optimization process.Three-dimensional(3D)continuous graphene(Gr)was synthesized by a combination of low temperature CVD growth of hydrogenated graphite(HG)coating on nanoporous copper(NPC)and rapid catalytic pyrolysis of HG at high temperature.Copper matrix composites reinforced with graphene(Gr/Cu composites)were fabricated via cool-rolling graphene/NPC and subsequent sintering process.The 3D continuous structure of graphene in bulk composites is well maintained after removing copper matrix.Because of the excellent interfacial bonding with copper matrix,a tensile strength and yield strength of 354MPa and 281 MPa respectively are achieved with the electrical conductivity of 98%IACS.For pure copper,the tensile strength and yield strength of the composite increase by 44.5%and 80.1%.