Design of exceptionally strong and conductive Cu alloys beyond the conventional speculation via the interfacial energy-controlled dispersion of γ-Al2O3 nanoparticles

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 5; no. 1; p. 17364
• Main Authors: Zeon Han, Seung, Kim, Kwang Ho, Kang, Joonhee, Joh, Hongrae, Kim, Sang Min, Ahn, Jee Hyuk, Lee, Jehyun, Lim, Sung Hwan, Han, Byungchan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 30.11.2015; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 119/118; 639/301/1023/303; 639/301/357/354; Humanities and Social Sciences; multidisciplinary; Science
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/srep17364

The development of Cu-based alloys with high-mechanical properties (strength, ductility) and electrical conductivity plays a key role over a wide range of industrial applications. Successful design of the materials, however, has been rare due to the improvement of mutually exclusive properties as conventionally speculated. In this paper, we demonstrate that these contradictory material properties can be improved simultaneously if the interfacial energies of heterogeneous interfaces are carefully controlled. We uniformly disperse γ-Al 2 O 3 nanoparticles over Cu matrix and then we controlled atomic level morphology of the interface γ-Al 2 O 3 //Cu by adding Ti solutes. It is shown that the Ti dramatically drives the interfacial phase transformation from very irregular to homogeneous spherical morphologies resulting in substantial enhancement of the mechanical property of Cu matrix. Furthermore, the Ti removes impurities (O and Al) in the Cu matrix by forming oxides leading to recovery of the electrical conductivity of pure Cu. We validate experimental results using TEM and EDX combined with first-principles density functional theory (DFT) calculations, which all consistently poise that our materials are suitable for industrial applications.