Compression strength, dielectric and magnetic properties of new aluminium matrix hybrid nanocomposites

Abstract

Nanocomposites are materials fabricated from two or more materials with different mechanical and electrical properties. Combining these materials produces a new designed material with new and better properties compared to the individual components. In recent years nanocomposites have been developed and employed almost in all industries. The current study deals with fabricating a hybrid nanocomposite ( when there are a minimum of three materials, the composite is called as hybrid composite). Pure aluminium as the base matrix. Iron oxide Fe2O3 (alpha) and aluminium oxide Al2O3 (alpha alumina). Fe2O3 weight percentage (wt.%) is varied (1.5, 2.5 and 5 % by weight) and the wt % of Al2O3 is held constant (2 wt.%). The new designed nanocomposite was produced using Powder Metallurgy (P/M) method. This method has been widely used for fabricating aluminium matrix nanocomposites (AMNCs), due to it is low costs and gives high accuracy as well as the ease of using. The matrix used was aluminium powder with an average particle size of (60µm) with 99.6% purity and Fe2O3 (99% purity and 30 nm particle size) and Al2O3 with (99.5% purity and 14-20 nm particle size ). The experimental results revealed that the microstructure images of composites showed uniformly distributed of Fe2O3 and Al2O3 in aluminium matrix. The maximum compressive strength is 152 MPa in nanocomposite containing (1.5 Fe2O3 + 2 Al2O3) wt.%. The improvement percentage was recorded to be 30% for CS. The real and imaginary components of relative permittivity decrease with increase of frequency. The hysteresis curve of nanocomposites showed that the magnetic properties were improved for all the nanocomposites but the better response of magnetic properties was found with the nanocomposite of (1.5% Fe2O3 + 2% Al2O3) content.