In-situ space-confined synthesis of well-dispersed three-dimensional graphene/carbon nanotube hybrid reinforced copper nanocomposites with balanced strength and ductility

It is a tough issue to design and fabricate discontinuously reinforced metal matrix composites (DRMMCs) with desired mechanical and physical properties. Utilizing nanocarbon materials such as one-dimensional (1D) carbon nanotubes (CNTs), two-dimensional (2D) graphene or their hybrids as reinforcements for DRMMCs is now considered to be a good solution because of their outstanding intrinsic characterizations. In this work, we proposed a novel in-situ space-confined strategy to circumvent the problem of the controllable interconnection and bonding between CNTs and graphene and thus constructed a well-dispersed CNTs embedded in three-dimensional graphene network (3D GN) hybrid structure for fabricating reinforced Cu matrix nanocomposites. The as-obtained 3D GN/CNT hybrids reinforced copper bulk nanocomposites exhibited a significant strengthening efficiency and a more balanced strength vs. ductility relation compared with Cu matrix composites reinforced by single component (CNT or 3D GN) with the same volume fraction.