Experimental study on drawability of aluminium-copper composite in micro deep drawing

To meet the increasing demand of multifunctional applications of microcomponents, metal composites have been gradually noted in micromanufacturing. In this paper, the formability of aluminium (Al)-copper (Cu) composite foils in micro deep drawing (MDD) was studied, and the mechanism involved was discussed. A two-layered Al-Cu composite with the thickness of 235 µm was selected and first rolled to 50 µm, and then annealed at 200, 300, 400 and 500 °C for 5 min prior to the MDD experiments. The results show that Al-Cu composite foil possesses the best combination of strength and ductility after annealing at 400 °C. With the increase in annealing temperature, the grains of both Al and Cu layers are refined, and in the meantime, the thickness of intermetallic layer also increases. The results from MDD tests indicate that the existence of intermetallic layer has a greater influence on the formability of the composite foil compared to the finer distribution of grains. On the basis of the obtained results, the optimised heat treatment method with the annealing temperature of 300 °C for 1 h was proposed, which was then proved to significantly improve the performance of the Al-Cu composite foil in MDD.