China Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory/Researcher Kaihui Liu of Peking University, Academician Wang Enge's research team and collaborators, recently published "Seeded growth of large single-crystal copperfoils with high-" in the world's top academic journal "Nature" The "index facets" research paper is the first in the world to report the use of table interface control to control nucleation and single-nuclear abnormal growth technology to realize the controllable preparation of more than 30 kinds of crystal face and A4 paper size single crystal copper foil library.
The market prospects for the development of single crystal copper foil are broad
The commercial copper currently on the market is basically polycrystalline copper, and certain defects in it cause the efficiency of electron and phonon transport to be greatly reduced. In contrast, single crystal copper has a single orientation, there are no grain boundaries inside the material, and the defect density is very low. It exhibits excellent electrical, thermal and catalytic properties. At the same time, the resistance and AC impedance are lower, and the flexibility is better. Transmission, electronics industry, flexible electronic circuits and other fields have broad market prospects.
However, currently commercialized single crystal metals are generally obtained by cutting bulk single crystal ingots, which are expensive and small in size, and cannot accurately prepare various high-index crystal planes. Therefore, the development of macro-manufacturing technology for large-size, rich-index single crystal copper foil has important scientific significance and technical value in materials science and engineering applications.
Realize the controllable preparation of the single crystal copper foil library with the world's largest size and the most complete crystal index
Based on the previous research, the light element material team led by Liu Kaihui systematically studied the thermodynamic and kinetic processes of grain growth during the recrystallization process of copper foil, developed a new annealing technology, and changed the traditional process, thus A high-index single crystal of A4 paper size is prepared, with more than 30 kinds of crystal planes.
At the same time, the research team used the prepared single crystal copper foil as a "seed crystal" on a large-size commercial polycrystalline copper foil. Through a special process, the crystal direction of the "seed crystal" was successfully copied to polycrystalline copper. On the foil, the precise orientation of large-size single-crystal copper foil and single-crystal copper ingot with a specific crystal plane can be achieved.
This achievement has realized the controllable preparation of the single crystal copper foil library with the largest size and the most complete crystal face index in the world. The proposed crystal face index adjustment mechanism and technology can be further extended to the single crystal manufacturing of other metal materials. Therefore, this achievement will have a significant impact on the manufacture and application of single crystal metals.