Synthesis of Cu-Al2O3 nano composite powder

To improve electrical and mechanical properties of electrodes for contact welding. the Cu-Al2O3 nano composite powders were developed by thermo-chemical process. This method uses water-soluble copper and aluminium nitrates as the starting material and consists of four steps: the preparation of nitrates water solution, spray drying of this solution to prepare initial powder with subsequent salt decomposition heat treatment in air atmosphere to prepare the oxide powder containing CuO and Al2O3 and a final hydrogen reduction of copper oxide to copper. Suggested method has shown a good result to achieve the agglomerated copper powder with about 20nm size of aluminium oxide clusters and a homogenous distribution of oxide particles. (C) 2001 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.