Brazing of doped graphite to Cu using stress relief interlayers

The microstructure and shear strength of brazed doped graphite (DG)/Cu joints by active metal brazing were studied. In order to evaluate the effect of stress relief interlayers on mechanical property, both kinds of joints, joined directly and inserted interlayer between substrates, were fabricated. It was found that directly brazing of DG to Cu was unsuccessful within the experimental conditions applied. A finite element method (FEM) was employed to evaluate the residual stress in the joints. It was found that the residual stress caused by the physiochemical properties mismatch between DG and Cu deteriorated the DG/Cu joints strength severely. FEM results showed that the use of Cu or Mo significantly reduced the residual stress, when comparing to those obtained without interlayer. Results from the FEM simulation also indicated that the combination of oxygen free high conductivity copper (OFHC)/Mo multi-interlayers were very effective to mitigate residual stress in the DG/Cu joints. Brazing experiments using OFHC/Mo/OFHC, OFHC/Ti/OFHC and OFHC/Ni/OFHC multi-interlayer were successful in all employed cases and the average strength of the joints reached 19.2 MPa with OFHC/Mo/OFHC multi-interlayer. TiC formation was found to be responsible for the filler metal/DG adhesion, some intermetallic compounds also detected in the braze seam due to the inter-diffusion of metallic elements.