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Isotropic thermal expansion in anisotropic thermal management composites filled with carbon fibres and graphite

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Abstract

Light materials with high thermal conductivity and low thermal expansion have a wide application potential for the thermal management of high-performance electronics, in particular in mobile and aerospace applications. We present here metal matrix composites with a mixture of graphite flakes and pitch-based carbon fibres as filler. The production by spark plasma sintering orients the filler particles on to a plane perpendicular to the pressing axis. The obtained materials have lower density than aluminium combined with a thermal conductivity significantly outperforming the used metal matrix. Depending on the ratio of the filler components, a low thermal expansion along the pressing direction (high graphite flakes content) or across the pressing direction (high carbon fibre content) is achieved. For a 1:3 ratio of carbon fibres to graphite, we measured an isotropic reduction of the thermal expansion of the matrix by up to 55%. We present a detailed characterisation of composites with two aluminium alloys as matrix and an overview of the properties for six different metal matrices including magnesium and copper. With the goal of a technical application, we show that the described properties are intrinsic to the material compositions and are achieved with a wide spectrum of production methods.

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Acknowledgements

VO acknowledges the Evonik Foundation for the financial support. We acknowledge M. Wolff from the Helmoltz-Zentrum Geesthacht for providing the Mg–0.9Ca powders, Ecka Granules GmbH for the aluminium powders and the Nippon Graphite Fiber Corporation for the carbon fibres. We thank P. Leibner from the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces for use of their equipment for tensile tests.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Freie Universität Berlin, Arnimallee 14, 14195, Berlin, Germany

    Valerio Oddone, Martin T. Hartmann & Stephanie Reich

  2. Institute of Chemical Technologies and Analytics, Vienna University of Technology, Getreidemarkt 9/164-CT, 1060, Vienna, Austria

    Jakob Segl & Christian Edtmaier

  3. Institute for Solid State Chemistry Bordeaux, CNRS, 87 Avenue du Docteur Albert Schweitzer, 33608, Pessac, France

    Mythili Prakasam & Jean-François Silvain

Authors
  1. Valerio Oddone
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  2. Jakob Segl
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  3. Mythili Prakasam
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  6. Christian Edtmaier
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  7. Stephanie Reich
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Correspondence to Valerio Oddone.

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Oddone, V., Segl, J., Prakasam, M. et al. Isotropic thermal expansion in anisotropic thermal management composites filled with carbon fibres and graphite. J Mater Sci 53, 10910–10919 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-018-2373-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-018-2373-6

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