Effect of Minor Titanium Addition on Copper/Diamond Composites Prepared by Hot Forging

Abstract

Copper/diamond composites have great potential to lead the next generation of advanced heat sink materials for using in high-power electronic devices and high density integrated circuits, due to its potential excellent properties of high thermal conductivity and close thermal expansion to the chip materials (e.g. Si, InP, GaAs). However, the poor wettability between copper and diamond presents a challenge for synthesising copper/diamond composites with effective metallurgical bonding and satisfied thermal performance. In this paper, copper/diamond composites were successfully prepared by hot forging of elemental copper and artificial diamond powders with small amounts (0 vol.%, 3 vol.% and 5 vol.%) of titanium additives. Microstructure observation and mechanical tests showed that, adding minor titanium additions in the copper/diamond composite resulted in fewer cracks in the composite's microstructure and significantly improved the bonding between the copper and. The strongest bonding strength was achieved for the copper/diamond composite with 3 vol.% titanium addition, and the possible reasons were discussed.

High thermal conductive copper/diamond composites: state of the art

“…Compared to other fabrication methods, powder forging can rapidly and cost-effectively prepare copper/diamond composites without using expensive manufacturing equipment, and it offers an alternative and potentially more effective fabrication method for producing copper/diamond composites. Yang et al first applied the powder forging technique to producing copper/diamond composites from the powder mixture of artificial diamond and elemental copper powders [61][62][63][64]. The carbide-forming elements such as titanium and chromium are introduced in the materials system via adding alloying element powders in the powder mixture or precoated the alloying element on the diamond particle surface.…”

The Impact of Interface Characteristics on Mechanical Performance of a Hot-Forged Cu/Ti-Coated-Diamond Composite

“…Magnetron sputtering was applied to deposit a 50 nm-thick Ti layer on the diamond surface. The Cu/diamond composites, with a nominal composition of Cu-55 vol.%diamond(Ti), was fabricated by hot forging of cold-pressed powder preform at 1050 °C and 800 °C, respectively, and the detailed materials processing procedures could be found in Refs [9] and [18].…”

“…Extensive research have been carried out on improving the Cu/diamond composite's thermal properties via introducing a suitable interfacial layer between the copper matrix and the diamond through matrix alloying [7][8][9] or metallizing diamond surface with carbon forming elements such as Ti, Cr, Mo [10][11][12][13]. There are very few research on the mechanical performance of Cu/diamond composites, except the reports on evaluating the effect of diamond's particle size [14], volume fraction [15], coating thickness [16], and carbide forming elements' content in copper matrix [17,18] on the Cu/diamond composites' mechanical properties.…”

Effects of Cu, Cu3Sn, Cu6Sn5 on Interfacial Properties between Cu–Sn Alloys and Diamond

“…[5] Furthermore, some researchers have proposed lots of methods to improve Cu-Sn alloys and diamond (111) wettability. [2,[6][7][8][9][10][11][12] Among these methods, two were commonly used: the introduction of a new additive [7,8] and the modification of the particles. [2,11,12] By first method, Tülay et al [6] pointed out that Co and Ni powders are used to ameliorate the wettability of Cu-Sn alloys and diamond phase in accordance with their good wetting properties.…”