Fabrication of Copper Alloys as Conductive Materials via Laser Beam Powder Bed Fusion

Abstract

Copper is an electrically and thermally conductive material widely used in industry, and copper-based materials are expected to facilitate a future society with a high degree of digital transformation. Laser beam powder bed fusion（LB-PBF）, a metal additive manufacturing method, is a promising technology that can provide functional products with arbitrarily complex shapes, controlled microstructures and crystal orientations. However, due to the low laser absorption and high thermal conductivity of copper, fabrication of copper-based functional materials by LB-PBF has been a major challenge. In this article, we fabricated zirconium-containing copper-based alloys with enhanced laser absorption using LB-PBF and optimized the process parameters to obtain functional high-density products. The alloys fabricated using LB-PBF achieved higher densities and were characterized by directional microstructures, and thus exhibited higher electrical conductivity than the as-cast alloys, as well as pure Cu fabricated using LB-PBF.