Recently aluminum foaming has been of much interest due to its characteristics properties of light weight structure. Metallic foams are highly porous materials which present complex structure of three-dimensional open cells. This aspect causes strong limitations in mass transport due to electro-deposition technology. In this work, the electro-deposition of copper on aluminum open-cell foams substrates was developed, in order to enhance the thermal and mechanical properties of these cellular materials. The mechanical and thermal characterization of the produced samples was lead through compression and conductivity tests. On the basis of the experimental results, analytical models are proposed to predict the quantity and the quality characteristics of the coatin

Additive manufacturing (AM) is a production process for the fabrication of three-dimensional items characterized by complex geometries. Several technologies employ a localized melting of metal dust through the application of focused energy sources, such as lasers or electron beams, on a powder bed. Despite the high potential of AM, numerous burdens afflict this production technology; for example, the few materials available, thermal stress due to the focused thermal source, low surface finishing, anisotropic properties, and the high cost of raw materials and the manufacturing process. In this paper, the combination by AM of meltable resins with metal casting for an indirect additive manufacturing (I-AM) is proposed. The process is applied to the production of open cells metal foams, similar in shape to the products available in commerce. However, their cellular structure features were designed and optimized by graphical editor Grasshopper®. The metal foams produced by AM were cast with a lost wax process and compared with commercial metal foams by means of compression tests.

Nanocomposite coatings with highly-aligned graphite nanoplatelets in a copper matrix were successfully fabricated by electrodeposition. For the first time, the disposition and thermal conductivity of the nanofiller has been evaluated. The degree of alignment and inclination of the filling materials has been quantitatively evaluated by polarized micro-Raman spectroscopy. The room temperature values of the thermal conductivity were extracted for the graphite nanoplatelets by the dependence of the Raman G-peak frequency on the laser power excitation. Temperature dependency of the G-peak shift has been also measured. Most remarkable is the global thermal conductivity of 640 ± 20 W·m⁻¹·K⁻¹ (+57% of copper) obtained for the composite coating by the flash method. Our experimental results are accounted for by an effective medium approximation (EMA) model that considers the influence of filler geometry, orientation, and thermal conductivity inside a copper matrix.