A Novel Technique for Controllable Fabrication of Multilayer Copper/Brass Block

Abstract

Fabricating a dissimilar-metal block with micro/nano-multilayered structures is usually used by engineers and scientists because of their excellent mechanical properties. In the current work, multilayered copper/brass blocks were effectively fabricated by a synthetical DWFR technique, which includes the processes of diffusion welding, forging and rolling. Diffusion welding was used as the first operation to metallurgically bond the copper and brass sheets, with a Zn diffusion transition layer (thickness of ~100 μm), which can guarantee the bonding strength of copper/brass interfaces during the subsequent forging and rolling processes. After diffusion welding, the original copper/brass blocks were required to be forged, with its total thickness reduced to ~10 mm. This can further restrain the delamination of copper and brass layers during the final rolling process. Rolling was utilized as the ideal operation that can precisely tune the thickness of copper/brass laminate. This novel DWFR technique can easily tune the multilayered copper/brass blocks with controllable layer thickness (from ~250 to ~800 nm). The copper/brass interfaces were well-bonded, and the utilization efficiency of raw materials was very high (>95%).