Abstract
Carbon nanotube reinforced copper matrix nanocomposites have great potential in machinery, microelectronics, and other applications. The materials are usually prepared by powder metallurgy processes, in which consolidation is a key step for high performance. To improve the density and mechanical properties, the authors explored the use of hot oscillatory pressing (HOP) to prepare this material. A carbon nanotube reinforced copper matrix nanocomposite was synthesized by both HOP and hot pressing (HP) at various temperatures, respectively. The samples prepared by HOP exhibited significantly higher density and hardness than those prepared by HP at the same temperature, and this was because the oscillatory pressure of HOP produced remarkable plastic deformation in copper matrix during sintering. With the decrease of sintering temperature in HOP, the amount of deformation defect increased gradually, playing a key role in the increasing hardness. This work proves experimentally for the first time that HOP can produce much more plastic deformation than HP to promote densification, and that HOP could be a very promising technique for preparing high-performance carbon nanotube reinforced copper matrix nanocomposites.
Highlights
The results reveal that the samples prepared by hot oscillatory pressing (HOP) contain a larger number of lattice defects, such as dislocations (Figure 9a) and dislocation walls (Figure 9b), while such dislocation activity was not observed from the samples prepared by hot pressing (HP) (Figure 9c)
This paper proves for the first time that the improvements in densification and mechanical properties exhibited by HOP-prepared materials are due to the plastic deformation produced by the oscillatory pressure, as speculated by the literatures [25,26,35]
CNTs/Cu nanocomposite with 3 vol.% of multiwall carbon nanotubes was prepared by both hot oscillatory pressing (HOP) and hot pressing (HP) at different temperatures ranging from 550 to 700 ◦ C
Summary
The materials are usually prepared by powder metallurgy processes, in which consolidation is a key step that has a great effect on the microstructures and properties of resultant materials [3,4]. When conventional sintering techniques are used, long sintering time and high sintering temperature are required for densifying the materials [6]. The resultant materials usually exhibited low relative density and coarse-grained structures; they required subsequent deformation (e.g., forging, extrusion, and rolling [7]) to further increase density [8,9]. The subsequent deformation can damage the structure of CNTs and the properties of the material [10]
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