Powder Rolling of Carbon Nanotube-Reinforced Aluminium Available to Purchase

Powder Rolling is a traditional technique for the fabrication of metal strips in which metal powder is continuously fed into a rolling mill and compacted into strip. Recently, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have emerged as promising new materials with exceptional properties. This has stimulated interest in their use to reinforce polymer, and ceramic matrices. In spite of their potential technological importance, a few research groups have investigated their use to reinforce metal matrices. In this paper, the powder rolling technique is used for the first time to fabricate aluminium strips reinforced with carbon nanotubes. Mixtures of aluminium powder and various wt% catalytic multi-wall carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) were roll compacted and sintered to form thin strips. CNTs were observed to be aligned in the in-plane direction. Tension tests were conducted on the strips to investigate the effect of the carbon nanotubes on the mechanical properties. Although the yield strength for the 0.5 wt% CNT samples increased, the ultimate strength and strain-to-failure for all samples with CNT were mostly lower than the base metal. This was attributed to the observed clustering of the CNTs, especially in higher wt% CNT samples. Provided the CNT clustering problem is overcome, the process promises many advantages; namely, its low cost, the ease of incorporating the carbon nanotubes and the potential important applications for the carbon nanotube-metal strips.