Current carrying capacity and failure mechanism of nitrogen-doped graphene/copper composite film

Abstract

Graphene-copper composite conductors with a high current-carrying capacity hold significant promise for electronic applications. They combine the abundant charge carrier density of copper with the superior charge carrier mobility of graphene. In this paper, a nitrogen-doped graphene/copper film (NGC) nanocomposite conductor were developed by in-situ growth of nitrogen-doped graphene on a copper film. Furthermore, the current-carrying properties and failure mechanisms of NGC were investigated by varying the proportion of nitrogen-doped graphene in the composite conductors. The results reveal that the conductivity of a 576 nm copper film increases to 5.509×107S·m−1 when coated with a 20 nm layer of nitrogen-doped graphene, which reaches 104.7% of the conductivity of the copper film (5.263×107S·m−1). In addition, the current-carrying capacity of the NGC conductor (4.96×107A·cm−2) experiences a 21% enhancement when compared with the capacity of the copper film (4.10×107A·cm−2). Microstructural characterization has confirmed that Joule heat constitutes the primary factor influencing the breakdown of the composite conductor. In particular, the introduction of nitrogen-doped graphene has led to an improvement in the thermal conductivity of the NGC conductor.