Classical estimates of the effective thermoelastic properties of copper–graphene composites

Significant research effort is concentrated worldwide on development of graphene-based metal-matrix composites with enhanced thermomechanical properties. In this work, we apply two classical micromechanical mean-field theories to estimate the effective thermoelastic properties that can be achieved in practice for a copper–graphene composite. In the modelling, graphene is treated as an anisotropic material, and the effect of its out-of-plane properties, which are less recognized than the in-plane properties, is studied in detail. To address the severe difficulties in processing of graphene-based metal-matrix composites, the copper–graphene composite is here assumed to additionally contain, due to imperfect processing, particles of graphite and voids. It is shown quantitatively that the related imperfections may significantly reduce the expected enhancement of the effective properties. The present predictions are also compared to the experimental data available in the literature.