Innovative approach for enhancing thermal diffusivity in metal matrix composites using graphene electrodeposition and multi-coating

In the present work, a thermographic procedure to evaluate in-plane thermal diffusivity and parallel finite element method were applied to a metal matrix composite layer. The observed coatings were realized with copper and graphene. Graphene application is more interesting in various fields, but this innovative technology shows various issues of application like the cluster formation that reduces mechanical and physic properties of coating. In this work, the application of graphene can be made with electrodeposition, and a matrix of copper was obtained with subsequent electrodeposition processes. This innovative methodology allows to avoid the issue of cluster formation and increases the amount of graphene in the final layer. In addition, the implementation of multi-coating increases thermal diffusivity by up to 65% obtaining results difficult to reach with a single layer of graphene. In addition, a FEA simulation was carried out to observe the compliance of the numerical method aimed at predicting the thermal properties of the obtained composite. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag London Ltd., part of Springer Nature 2024.