Agradecimentos: This work was partly financed by the Coordenacão de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior – Brasil (CAPES)– Finance Code 001, CNPq, and FAPESP. The authors thank the Center for Computational Engineering and Sciences (CCES) at Unicamp for financial support through the FAPESP/CEPID Grant 2013/08293-7. LDM would also like to thank the support of the High-Performance Computing Center at UFRN (NPAD/UFRN). C.S.T. acknowledges DAE Young Scientist Research Award (DAEYSRA), and AOARD (Asian Office of Aerospace Research and Development) grant no. FA2386-21-1-4014, and Naval Research Board for funding support. C.S.T. acknowledges the funding support of AMT and Energy & Water Technologies of TMD Division of DST Ver menos

Abstract: Additive manufacturing/3D printing is currently utilized to build complex structures, such as heat exchangers. This paper investigates one of the additive manufacturing processes, powder bed fusion melting (PBF-M), with optimized laser power and scan rate to investigate the mechanical, tribological, and electrical properties of copper-graphene (Cu-GR) composite. We have employed a predetermined laser scan path to melt the Cu-GR alloy to improve the aforementioned properties. The microstructural and hardness of the Cu-GR composites have also been compared with PBF-M copper. Among the investigated Cu-GR composites, Cu-1wt%GR exhibits the highest micro-Vickers hardness value. This paper also demonstrates the upper limit to the concentration of GR that can be added as reinforcement to the Cu matrix for successful PBF-M process. Graphene addition to the Cu matrix and their uniform distribution achieved through PBF-M process has significant effect in mechanical and wear properties of the composites. The underlying mechanism of tribological and electrical properties have shown through experiments and Molecular Dynamics simulations, while Density Functional Theory simulations were also used to address the experimentally observed changes in electrical conductivity Ver menos