Improvement of the mechanical and thermal characteristics of open cell aluminum foams by the electrodeposition of Cu

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 coating. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).