2nd World Congress and Expo on Nanotechnology and Material Science April 04-06, 2016 at Dubai, UAE
Conference Proceedings

Oral Enhanced mechanical properties of bulk graphene/aluminum composites with a bio-inspired nanolaminated structure

Qiang Guo
State Key Laboratory of Metal Matrix Composites, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Zan Li
State Key Laboratory of Metal Matrix Composites, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Z. Li
State Key Laboratory of Metal Matrix Composites, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
G. Fan
State Key Laboratory of Metal Matrix Composites, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Di Zhang
State Key Laboratory of Metal Matrix Composites, Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Published 2018-01-01

Abstract

Bulk graphene-reinforced Al matrix composites of various reinforcement concentrations were fabricated via a modifiedpowder metallurgy approach. These composites possess a nanolaminated, brick-and-mortar architecture, where layers of~200nm-thick pure Al platelets are stacked in a staggered arrangement, and are separated by graphene sheets, each containing4-5 graphene monolayers. The composite containing 1.5 vol. % graphene were shown to have an uniaxial tensile strength of302±3MPa, about 50% higher than that of unreinforced Al matrix prepared using the same fabrication route (201±6MPa).Moreover, the composite possess a uniform elongation of 3.4±0.2%, only slightly lower than that of the Al matrix (4.3±0.4%),and have a significantly lower strain hardening capability. Combined with post-mortem and in situ transmission electron microscopic(TEM) analysis, our findings were interpreted in terms of the uniform distribution of graphene in the Al matrix, theeffective load transfer between the graphene sheets and Al platelets, and the interaction between mobile dislocations and thegraphene-Al interfaces.