Carbon-metal carbide composites are a novel family of materials with potential application in heat dissipation due to the lightness and thermal-mechanical properties. Within these composites, those of graphite-chromium carbide have been still few studied. Therefore, this research focuses on both the influence of the powder preparation method (mechanical mixing (MM) and colloidal synthesis (CS)) and the spark plasma sintering (SPS) temperature (1600, 1700, 1800, 1900 and 2000 °C) in the properties of the composite graphite-7 vol. Cr. Results indicate that the composites sintered from powders processed by CS exhibit better properties, which can be explained by the better dispersion of the chromium carbide, formed during the sintering process, in the matrix of composite. Apart from the powder preparation method, sintering temperature has influence on the properties of the composite: 1900 °C is the best in the case of the route CS + SPS, while 2000 °C is the best option in the route MM + SPS. The thermal conductivity in-plane is 1.75 times greater in the CS than in the MM route, which suggests a better performance in the composite processed by colloidal route in heat dissipation applications.

This research was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. Call Programa Estatal de I+D+i Orientada a los Retos de la Sociedad [RTI2018-102269-B-I00]. This research was also supported by a Juan de la Cierva Formación grant from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MCINN) to Daniel Fernández-González [FJC2019-041139-I]. Juan Piñuela Noval acknowledges the Programa “Severo Ochoa” of Grants for Research and Teaching of the Principality of Asturias for the funds received for the elaboration of the Ph. D. Thesis (Ref: BP20 041).

Peer reviewed