Hot rolling behavior of graphene/Cu composites

Hot rolling is one of the most important thermoforming methods for metal matrix composites. However, to date, there are limited studies devoted to the research on the hot rolling behavior of graphene/metal composites. In this work, the influence of hot rolling on the evolution of microstructures, textures, and tensile properties of the graphene/Cu composites was systemically investigated. Firstly, this is done by comparing hot-rolled composites with different temperatures at 400 °C, 500 °C and 600 °C after 80% reduction. Interestingly, it was found that the graphene in the composite could be significantly exfoliated when rolling at 500 °C. Further texture analysis indicated that a strong component of shear deformation texture {001}<110> was formed. The exfoliation of the graphene can be explained by the presence of shear deformation and related mechanism was discussed. The composites with different rolling reductions (rolling at 500 °C) specifically revealed that the evolution of graphene gradually underwent three processes: 1. Aligned along rolling direction; 2. Broken into small pieces; 3. Exfoliated into thinned graphene. As a result, a high strength and good ductility composite can be realized. These findings provide new insights toward scalable and efficient fabricating of the graphene/metal composites with high performance.