Zinc oxide nanorods effect in micro structural and mechanical characteristics of aluminium composite material

In the present study, aluminium zinc oxide (Al-ZnO) nanorods composites with 3.5 and 5 wt% ZnO in Al were manufactured using powder metallurgy and microwave hybrid sintering. A fairly uniform reinforcement distribution and clear interface was perceived in the micro structural and energy dispersive spectroscopy analysis of composite material. It was observed from XRD analysis that no secondary (intermetallic) phase of Al and ZnO were present in the composite material. The simultaneous thermal analysis of the composites was done to understand the variation in the exothermic peak temperature and weight change percentage of composite material. The developed composite material with 5 wt% ZnO exhibited promising results in terms of micro-hardness (-2 times), nano hardness (-3.5 times) and elastic modulus (-1.9 times) greater value compared to Al. The increased addition of ZnO nanorods in aluminium shows enrichment in properties rendering the material suitable for different engineering applications.