Preparation and property study of La(Fe, Si, Co)13/Cu composite with nearly zero thermal expansion behavior

•The LaFe10.5Co1.0Si1.5/Cu exhibits near zero thermal expansion around RT.•It has high thermal and electrical conductivity properties.•It is stable after several thermal cycles.•Studied the structure of it.•Analyzed the reasons of near zero thermal expansion property and stability.

In this work, a new kind of La(Fe, Si, Co)13/Cu composite with near zero thermal expansion property was successfully synthesized. The composite shows almost zero thermal expansion with a coefficient of thermal expansion of 0.8 × 10−6 K−1 in the temperature range of 301–325 K. In addition, the thermal conductivity and electrical resistivity were investigated. Compared with pure La(Fe, Si, Co)13 materials, the La(Fe, Si, Co)13/Cu composite shows significant improvement in both thermal and electrical conductivities. The thermal conductivity of the LaFe10.5Co1.0Si1.5/Cu composite is 25.1 W m−1 K−1, which is about five times than that of the pure LaFe10.5Co1.0Si1.5. The electrical resistivity reaches 0.16 × 10−6 Ω m. This offers a new kind of metal matrix composites with low/near zero thermal expansion, high thermal and electrical conductivity properties.

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