Recent progress in architecture design of nanocarbon-reinforced metal matrix composites and their properties: A review

Nano-carbon materials (graphene, carbon nanotube) are considered as ideal reinforcements for metal matrix composites (MMCs) due to their excellent mechanical and physical properties. However, discontinuous nanocarbon-reinforced MMCs with homogeneous configuration cannot maximize the synergistic coupling effect between reinforcement and matrix mainly due to their anisotropic nanocarbon geometry and weak carbon-metal interfacial bonding. In recent years, nanocarbon-reinforced MMCs with non-uniform architectures including laminate, 3D network, alignment and hierarchical architectures have been reported and the overall performance of the composites can be effectively improved. Therefore, in this review, the methods for fabrication of nano-carbon reinforced MMCs with these architectures are summarized. The properties including mechanical and conductive properties, and structure-property relationship of these composites with different architectures are analyzed. Finally, possible research directions and challenges for architecture design in nanocarbon-reinforced MMCs are outlined.