Highly conductive diamond skeleton reinforced Cu-matrix composites for high-efficiency thermal management

The weak interfacial bonding strength between diamond and copper intrinsically restricts the enhancement of the thermal conductivity of diamond particles/copper composites (abbreviated as DP/Cu). This work first proposed the diamond skeleton (DS) as the reinforcement element rather than dispersed diamond particles. The tungsten (W) transition layer (c.a. ∼300 nm thick) having adequate thermal expansion coefficient was sputtered onto the surface of DS via vacuum evaporation technology, aiming to improve the wettability between diamond and copper and accordingly increase the thermal conductivity of DS/copper composites extruded by gas pressure infiltration technique. The experimental results show that the coated W layer can effectively improve the wettability of the diamond surface and reduce the wettability angle from 108.6° to 13.2°. Raman and XRD spectra show that the W layer can, to a great extent, prevent the graphitization of the diamond surface. SEM and EDX evidence a continuous heat transfer path of DS inside the composites. The thermal conductivity of the DS/Cu composite with low diamond loading of 18.4 vol% reaches 575 W/mK, 43.3% higher than that of pure Cu. Finite element simulations show that DS exhibits excellent heat transfer characteristics, agreeing well with the thermal conductivity simulation results.