Development and present situation of laminated metal composites

Laminated metal composites are composed of two or more metals or alloys, which integrate various excellent properties of the component materials and exhibit good comprehensive properties. The history of laminated metal composites can be traced back to more than 800 BC, and their systematic research began in the 1970s. Over the past 30 years, various methods have been invented to fabricate laminated metal composites, including explosive bonding, rolling bonding, hot-pressing bonding, and deposition bonding. Explosive bounding method has irreplaceable advantages in the preparation of medium thick plates with its products being widely used in military industry, ship, electric power, chemical industry, and other fields. On the other hand, rolling bonding is most widely used because of its ability of large quantity production. Cold roll bonding (CRB) and accumulative roll bonding (ARB) are two representative laminate preparation technologies that are utilized in the fabrication of a large number of material systems. Up to now, laminates prepared by rolling bonding are widely used in automobile, ship, aerospace, and other fields. The preparation of Ti/Al, Ti/TiAl, and Ti6Al4V/TiAl layered composites via vacuum hot-pressing bonding has attracted much attention in recent years because of its ability to avoid gas pollution such as oxygen production. Moreover, laminated metal composites produced by deposition bonding have great potential as corrosion resistant coatings, wear-resistant coatings, and high-strength conductors and implants. Although laminated metal composites have been well developed, there are still various problems to be solved. For some soft/hard material systems, the hard layer introduces plastic instability during the rolling process that destroys the continuity between layers. As a consequence, serious weakening of the comprehensive performance of the laminates is observed. Furthermore, only few studies on the design and new processes of laminated metal materials have been conducted. This paper reviewed the development of laminated metal composites, introduced the preparation methods and advantages and disadvantages of layered metal composites, and analyzed the research status of laminated metal composites at home and abroad.