Fabrication of high thermal conductivity Cu/diamond composites at ambient temperature and pressure

High thermal conductivity Cu/diamond composites were produced at ambient temperature and pressure using an electrodeposition technique, employing various diamond particle sizes in the range of 10 to 230 μm. The microstructures of the resulting composites were analyzed by scanning electron microscopy and their thermal conductivities were assessed using a Xenon flash instrument. The theoretical thermal conductivities of these materials were calculated based on the Hasselman-Johnson equation and compared with the experimentally determined values. The Cu/diamond composites produced in this work were found to exhibit compact textures without any gaps between the Cu matrix and the diamond particles, and the experimental thermal conductivities were in good agreement with the theoretical values. The specimen containing 61 vol.% of 230 μm diameter diamond particles had the highest conductivity of 662 W K-1 m-1, which is 1.6 times that of pure Cu (ca. 400 W K-1 m-1).