Fabrication of Porous Copper using Metal Injection Moulding (MIM) in Combination with Space Holder Technique

The increased interest in porous metal fabrication is due to the multi-functional properties offered by this group of materials and grabbing numerous attention of industries. Porous metal offers outstanding properties, including lightweight material, optimum strength, excellent thermal conductivity, good energy absorption and many more. These porous metals can be applied in various applications such as structural, functional, biomedical, and many more. In this project, the porous copper was fabricated by combining the powder metallurgy approach, Metal Injection Moulding (MIM), with the space holder technique, MIM-SH. This technique combines the MIM benefits, which are capable of producing complex parts and high-accuracy design, and at the same time, the pore morphologies can be controlled. This project aims to investigate the capability of the MIM-SH technique for the manufacture of porous Cu with different space holder volumes between 50-75%. A new binder system was designed for porous Cu fabrication, and the removal process of the binder and space holder can be performed simultaneously. Furthermore, a new mixing method has also been investigated that suit the new SpeedMixer Machine. The fabricated porous metal has been investigated using selected analytical analysis to determine properties such as porosity, mechanical properties, and thermal behaviour. The study involves different types of manufacturing processes, such as Metal Injection Moulding machines and Pressing Machines. The analysis and characterization process involved high-end characterization machines such as Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and X-ray Fluorescence (XRF). This study produced porous Cu samples with different porosity between 8.67 to 80.7% with irregular pore shapes. The porosity development was completely replicating the morphology of the KCl as the porosity increase with the increasing space holder volume.