Nanocarbons in aluminium alloys for automotive applications – Advantages, challenges and outlook

The use of reinforced metallic materials in automotive sector is gaining momentum and more and more automobile manufacturing companies are introducing advanced smart materials within their production lines. The reasons is, that the car manufacturers have to reduce the weight of the automobiles to fulfil strict fuel economy requirement in order to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases, while the demands of the consumers for improved safety, advanced electronic systems for interior comforts, navigation and entertainment would lead to a raised weight. To meet these challenges, car manufacturers are turning to light weight metals as a solution. Besides reducing mass, using advanced metal-matrix composites can also provide improved reliability and efficiency. The concept of MMCs is not new, though the processing challenges -compared to their polymer matrix analogues - have impeded their advancement somewhat so far. Since the discovery of CNTs in the early 90s there has been a raising interest in using nanocarbons in MMCs. Recent advances in carbon nanotubes synthesis and their relative comparable costs have opened the opportunity for the inclusion of CNTs to improve current technologies by increasing their mechanical performance.