Fabrication of Vapor Grown Carbon Fiber Reinforced Aluminum Composites by Spark Sintering

Abstract

As vapor grown carbon fiber (VGCF) possesses the good mechanical properties, high thermal conductivity, high electrical conductivity and low thermal expansion, VGCF/ Al composites are expected to be suitable materials for a high performance radiator. In this study, VGCF were dipped and treated with ultrasonic vibration in some kinds of solution at first. Then, the mixed powders including three kind of average particle size of Al (1, 3 and 30µm) was milled by wet process with three kinds of solution, which are acetone, ethanol and butanol. Ethanol is most suitable for mixing solution because of homogeneous distribution of VGCF and Al powders. The mixed powders were spark-sintered in order to obtain dense VGCF/Al composites. The densification mechanism of VGCF/Al composites was divided into the plastic deformation (2nd stage) and creep deformation (3rd stage) after the 1st stage of rectangular wave pulse discharge. The densification rate of VGCF/Al composite powder depended on Al powder for matrix, but independent on VGCF. VGCF are dispersed uniformly in the VGCF/1 µm Al composite. But the aggregations of VGCF exhibited a preferential orientation in VGCF/30 µm Al composite, which results from the deformation of Al powders under the uniaxial pressure during the hot pressing in sintering process.