Influence of sintering methods on the mechanical properties of aluminium nanocomposites reinforced with carbonaceous compounds: A review

This paper succinctly reviews from the corpus of literature the reinforcement of aluminium with carbonaceous nanocompounds (CNTs, GNPs, graphenes etc.), with particular emphasis on the strength and ductility of the resulting composites based on the utilized fabrication routes. Owing to the unique intrinsic properties of these carbonaceous nanocompounds, they have been widely reported as ideal reinforcement materials for aluminium and its compounds. Significant amount of work has been published on the use of solid-state sintering as a novel route for the incorporation of these nanocompounds in aluminium matrices. This paper therefore aims to review some relevant aspects of the fabrication processes of these aluminium based composites such as (i) effects of the sintering routes and parameters on the resulting properties of the composites; (ii) the effect of dispersion techniques on the resulting properties of the composites; (iii) the strength-ductility trade-off in the reinforced composites; and (iv) the intermetallics formed between the carbonaceous nanocompounds and aluminium.