Gas-atomized copper-based particles encapsulated in graphene oxide for high wear-resistant composites

A novel architecture of graphene oxide wrapped copper spheres (Cu/GO) is proposed for fabricating high wear resistant Cu-based composites. Tribological results indicate that GO shell layers present an exceptional strengthening efficiency surpassing conventional nanoparticle, fiber and nanosheet reinforcements for Cu-based materials reported to date. The friction torque of the composites shows a load-insensitive behavior stabilized at 0.26-0.41 Nm. Such good tribological performance is ascribed to integrated effects including strong metal/GO interfacial coupling, uniform distributed GO, and the GO-assisted tribofilm formed on ridges and asperities of wear tracks. The fabrication strategy is convenient, low cost, easily scalable, and can be expanded to the preparation of other metal/GO materials.