Manufacturing of high strength and high conductivity copper with laser powder bed fusion

Additive manufacturing (AM), known as 3D printing, enables rapid fabrication of geometrically complex copper (Cu) components for electrical conduction and heat management applications. However, pure Cu or Cu alloys produced by 3D printing often suffer from either low strength or low conductivity at...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature communications 2024-02, Vol.15 (1), p.1283-1283, Article 1283
Main Authors: Liu, Yingang, Zhang, Jingqi, Niu, Ranming, Bayat, Mohamad, Zhou, Ying, Yin, Yu, Tan, Qiyang, Liu, Shiyang, Hattel, Jesper Henri, Li, Miaoquan, Huang, Xiaoxu, Cairney, Julie, Chen, Yi-Sheng, Easton, Mark, Hutchinson, Christopher, Zhang, Ming-Xing
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
3-D printers
639/166/988
639/301/1023/1026
Additive manufacturing
Conduction heating
Conductivity
Copper
Copper base alloys
Dispersion
Electrical conduction
Fabrication
High strength
High temperature
Humanities and Social Sciences
Lanthanum
Lasers
Low conductivity
Manufacturing
multidisciplinary
Nanoparticles
Powder beds
Printing
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Solidification
Thermal stability
Three dimensional printing
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Additive manufacturing (AM), known as 3D printing, enables rapid fabrication of geometrically complex copper (Cu) components for electrical conduction and heat management applications. However, pure Cu or Cu alloys produced by 3D printing often suffer from either low strength or low conductivity at room and elevated temperatures. Here, we demonstrate a design strategy for 3D printing of high strength, high conductivity Cu by uniformly dispersing a minor portion of lanthanum hexaboride (LaB 6 ) nanoparticles in pure Cu through laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF). We show that trace additions of LaB 6 to pure Cu results in an improved L-PBF processability, an enhanced strength, an improved thermal stability, all whilst maintaining a high conductivity. The presented strategy could expand the applicability of 3D printed Cu components to more demanding conditions where high strength, high conductivity and thermal stability are required. Copper produced by laser additive manufacturing often faces challenges with either low strength or low conductivity. Here, the authors present a design strategy to introduce uniformly dispersed nanoprecipitates during solidification, enhancing the strength while maintaining high conductivity.
ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/s41467-024-45732-y