Copper has excellent thermal and electrical conductivity and offers a wide range of possibilities for industrial application due to the versatility of various alloying strategies. Therefore, copper and its alloys play a crucial role as a constructional and functional material in electronic, automotive and aerospace industry. Additive manufacturing of copper via laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) enables new fields of application due to a higher degree of freedom and an individual materials design. However, many important aspects of additive manufacturing of copper have not been investigated in detail. In particular, the impact of different powder qualities due to aging of the copper powder is rarely reported in literature. Thus, the presented study focusses on the impact aging behaviour of diverse copper powder to its powder properties and its effect on the LPBF process.

Within the scope of this study, various low-alloyed copper materials, such as CuCr1Zr and CuNi2.5SiCr, as well as pure copper (Cu-OFE), were considered. Using a gas atomization system, metal powder was produced from raw material and observed with a high-speed camera during the atomization process. Afterwards the powders were prepared for LPBF via sieving and air separation.
The focus of the study is based on the comparison of the different powder properties before and after a heat treatment. The characterization of the copper powders included the measurement of the particle size distribution as well as the powder density and the flowability. Furthermore, the powders were metallographically prepared and characterized with the help of analytical scanning electron microscopy in combination with EDS, EBSD and FIB with regard to pore formation, crystallographic texture, precipitation formation.