High strength and ductility of graphene-like carbon nanosheet/copper composites fabricated directly from commercial oleic acid coated copper powders.

Recently, copper matrix composites reinforced with graphene or graphene-like carbon nanosheets (GNS) have attracted great attention due to their excellent properties. However, the fabrication technologies of the composites are generally complex and expensive; it is necessary to develop facile and cheap synthesis methods for industrial applications of the composites with high performance. Here, we present a very simple method to fabricate GNS reinforced copper composites: commercial Cu powders with oleic acid coating are directly fabricated into GNS/Cu composites by spark plasma sintering. This work provides a facile method with low cost and high efficiency for the preparation of GNS reinforced metal matrix composites with high performance, which opens a new window for the large-scale production of graphene based composites.