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Effects of sintering parameters on the microstructure and mechanical properties of carbon nanotubes reinforced aluminum matrix composites

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Abstract

By using high purity aluminum powders and multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) as raw materials, MWCNTs/Al composites were fabricated with ball milling, followed by cold pressing, vacuum sintering, and hot extrusion. It was found that when the sintering temperature was 863 K, MWCNTs/Al composite sintered for 4 h showed good comprehensive properties, and its tensile strength and elongation reached to 156 MPa and 21%, respectively. The comprehensive mechanical properties of the composites became better with raising sintering temperature when the sintering time was 4 h. When the sintering temperature raised to 923 K, the tensile strength of the composite reached to 167 MPa which is three times more than that of annealed high purity aluminum, mainly due to the higher density and better interface bonding resulted from higher sintering temperature. CNTs’ pulling out were observed obviously in the fractured surfaces, and load transfer may be the main strengthening mechanism.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The authors acknowledge professor Ming Xie at Kunming Institution of Precious Metals in China for technical assistance and Dr. Benxin Wu at Purdue University in the United States for helpful discussions. Additional financial supports provided by the Natural Science Foundation of Yunnan Provincial Science and Technology Department (grant 2014FC001 and 2011FB021), Natural Science Foundation of Kunming university of Science and Technology (grant KKSY201551036), Undergraduate Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Program of Kunming university of Science and Technology (grant 201510674071), and National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant 51361017) are also gratefully acknowledged.

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  1. Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming, 650093, China

    Caiju Li, Xiaoqing Liu, Jianhong Yi, Long Teng, Rui Bao, Jun Tan, Chao Yang & Zhou Zou

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  1. Caiju Li
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  2. Xiaoqing Liu
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Correspondence to Caiju Li or Jianhong Yi.

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Li, C., Liu, X., Yi, J. et al. Effects of sintering parameters on the microstructure and mechanical properties of carbon nanotubes reinforced aluminum matrix composites. Journal of Materials Research 31, 3757–3765 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2016.436

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