The promising Cu/graphene composites in situ fabricated by solid organic carbon sources

Copper/graphene composites have attracted extensive attention in electrical materials due to their excellent electrical and mechanical properties. However, graphene is easy to agglomerate and poorly bonded with copper, leading to its performance failing to meet expectations. In this paper, an in-situ fabrication method using solid organic compounds (malic acid, maleic acid, and melamine) as the carbon sources is adopted to achieve the uniform dispersion of graphene and the strong interface bonding between Cu and graphene, and further explore the rules of selecting different carbon sources. The morphology and quantity of graphene and the interfacial structure are deeply analyzed. The three-dimensional high-quality graphene and the strong copper/carbon interface due to the Cu-O-C chemical bond facilitate the Cu/graphene composite fabricated by malic acid to exhibit the best comprehensive performance, the electrical conductivity is 96.40% International Annealed Copper Standard (IACS) and the hardness is 75.13HV.