Fabrication, Microstructure, Thermal and Electrical Properties of Copper Heat Sink Composites

Abstract

Copper as well as copper base composites reinforced with coated and uncoated 1 wt% diamond, graphite particles or short carbon fibers are prepared by powder me-tallurgy process. The reinforcement particles were encapsulated with silver as well as copper layer by using the electroless deposition technique to investigate the influence of the reinforcement surface coating on the microstructure, density, electrical and thermal properties of the sintered samples. The coated and the uncoated powders were cold compacted at 600 MPa, and then sintered at 1173 K (900˚C) for 2 h under hydrogen atmosphere. The phase composition, morphology and microstructure of the prepared powders as well as the copper base sintered composites were investi-gated using X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD) and Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) equipped with an Energy Dispersive Spectrometer (EDS) respectively. The density of the sintered composites was measured by Archimedes method. The copper base consolidated composites had a density up to 96% and the reinforcement coated particles were distributed uniformly within the copper matrix better than the un-coated one. The electrical resistivity at room temperature and the heat transfer con-duction of the produced samples were measured in a temperature range between 323 K (50˚C) and 393 K (120˚C). The results observed that the sintered materials pre-pared from the coated powder have lower electrical resistivity than the sintered ma-terials prepared from the mixed powders. On the other hand the thermal conductiv-ity values were calculated using the heat transfer conduction values by means of the Fourier formula. The results observed that the thermal conductivity of copper is (391 W/m • K), 1 wt% diamond/Cu is (408 W/m • K), 1 wt% graphite coated silver/Cu is (393 W/m • K), 1 wt% Cu coated short carbon fiber/Cu is (393 W/m • K), graphite/Cu is (383 W/m • K) and short carbon fiber/Cu is (382 W/m • K). The obtained composites How to cite this paper: Daoush, W., Swi-dan, A., Abd El-Aziz, G. and Abdelhalim, M. (2016) Fabrication, Microstructure, Thermal and Electrical Properties of Copper Heat Sink Composites. Materials Sciences and Applications, 7, 542-561. W. Daoush et al. 543 are expected to be suitable for heat sink applications. The heat transfer testing expe-riments were done. The forced convection of the present work was done and com-pared with the previous work in the literature, and satisfactory agreement was achieved.