Effect of Sintering Cycle on Physical and Mechanical Properties of Open Pore Cell Copper Foam

Poor thermal management leads to high LED junction temperature and give negative impacts to its life and performance. High temperature of LED junction has proven to produce less light and accelerate chip degeneration. Open pore cell copper foam provide good solution to the poor thermal management problem since it has higher surface area, thus increase surface emissivity and enhance thermal conductivity. In this study, copper foams were fabricated using metal injection moulding using potassium carbonate as space holder. The effect of sintering cycle on physical and mechanical properties were studied using two different sintering cycle which are 450-850 °C and 450-850-950 °C. It is found that sintered copper foams using 450 °C-850-950 °C sintering cycle has better mechanical properties in term of hardness and transverse rupture strength. It also exhibited higher porosity which is up to 33.9% compared to 33.1%, thus has higher surface area. This is proven by higher thermal conductivity exhibit by the specimen sintered using 450 °C-850-950 °C.