Copper Foam

Copper foam is a new type of multifunctional material with a large number of connected or disconnected holes uniformly distributed in a copper matrix. Copper foam has good conductivity and ductility, and the preparation cost is lower than that of nickel foam, and the conductivity is better, so it can be used for the preparation of battery negative electrode (carrier) materials, catalyst carriers and electromagnetic shielding materials. In particular, copper foam is used in batteries as the electrode substrate material, has some obvious advantages, but due to the corrosion resistance of copper is not as good as nickel, thus limiting some of its applications.

Preparation method

Polyurethane foam as a substrate, pretreatment, chemical deposition, electrodeposition and incineration and thermal reduction process to prepare a uniform distribution of three-dimensional mesh pore structure, high void ratio (> 95%) and a certain degree of tensile strength of the copper foam material.

Electrolytic copper powder and NaCl particles as raw materials, sintering a desolvation technology for the preparation of through-hole copper foam, the NaCl particles and electrolytic copper powder and additives are mixed uniformly and pressed to the billet, in the sintering furnace under the gas atmosphere sintering, the obtained items are placed in a circulating hot water device will be dissolved NaCl particles, and then ultrasonic water bath in the washing and acetone cleaning, and finally drying, that is, the preparation of copper foam materials with a three-dimensional interconnected spatial network structure by the Three-dimensional interconnected spatial network composed of open pores, porosity of 50~81%, the average pore size of 0.2~4mm and the existence of microscopic pores in the matrix of through-hole copper foam products.

The copper foam material with uniform thickness, high porosity and certain tensile strength is prepared by chemical preplating, electrodeposition and heat treatment.

Application Fields

Copper foam is a new type of functional material which is mainly used in the following fields.

1. Electrode materials: excellent conductivity so that copper foam can be widely used in nickel-zinc batteries, double layer capacitors and other new battery electrode skeleton materials, copper foam has been a number of nickel-zinc battery manufacturers to try and put into batch use, at the same time, copper foam is expected to be used as the electrode electrode collector for double layer capacitors to gain popularity and application; in addition, the copper foam used as an electrolytic recovery of copper-containing wastewater electrode materials, also has a very broad prospect. In addition, the use of copper foam as electrode material for electrolytic recovery of copper-containing wastewater also has a very broad prospect.

2. catalyst: in many organic chemical reactions, people try to directly use copper foam with a large surface area instead of perforated copper, as a catalyst for chemical reactions; copper foam as a photocatalytic air purification carrier, has also been more successful applications.

3. Thermal conductivity materials: copper foam has excellent thermal conductivity, making it a flame retardant materials with excellent performance, many advanced fire equipment in foreign countries to obtain applications, especially as a flame isolation equipment with excellent results; in addition, people use the excellent thermal conductivity of copper foam and apparent permeability, made into motors, electrical appliances, heat dissipation materials.

4. Muffling and shielding materials: sound waves in the copper foam surface diffuse reflection, and through the expansion of the muffling, microporous muffling and other principles, to achieve the effect of muffling; copper shielding performance and silver close to the performance of an electromagnetic shielding materials.

5. Filtering materials: excellent structural properties and the basic harmless to the human body of the foam metal copper products, as a medical filtering materials, has also been successfully applied; at the same time, the foam copper in the water purification device application also has a better future.

6. Fluid pressure buffer material: copper foam on the fluid dispersion and buffer effect, so that as a variety of pressure instrumentation pressure reduction protection device, with excellent results.