During the vacuum breaking process of a small load current of shunt reactors and capacitor banks, the chopping current induced overvoltage will seriously threaten the safe and reliable operation of the switchgear itself and other power equipment. At present, a large amount of research has been conducted on the physical and chemical properties of graphene reinforced copper contact materials. They have shown excellent anti ablation performance during the high current breaking process of SF6 circuit breakers. However, there is still a lack of relevant research reports on their current chopping characteristics of small current vacuum breaking. This article aims to study the small current breaking and current chopping characteristics of GR/CuCr40 composite contact material vacuum interrupter (VI). The study used a 24 kV commercial VI with a contact diameter of 72mm. The experimental contact materials used include CuCr40 (GR-0wt%), CuCr40 (GR-1wt%), and CuCr40 (GR-3wt%). Results show that the chopping current of CuCr40 (GR-0wt%) is 1.60–3.30 A; The chopping current of CuCr40 (GR-1wt%) is 1.60–2.80 A, and its mean value is 7.5% lower than that of CuCr40 (GR-0wt%); The chopping current of CuCr40 (GR-3wt%) is 2.10–4.20 A, with an average increase of 44.7% compared to CuCr40 (GR-0wt%). The reason for the above results may be due to the lower electron escape work of C atoms compared to Cu or Cr, and the lower content of graphene components is more conducive to maintaining stability in small current vacuum arcs. But as the proportion of graphene components increases, its higher thermal conductivity may reduce the electron emission rate near the cathode area of the vacuum arc, making the arc more unstable and causing current chop phenomenon. The application of CuCr40 (GR-1wt%) contact material for vacuum switching in reactive power compensation capacitor banks not only has the potential to reduce the damage to the contact surface caused by high-frequency and high-amplitude pre-breakdown inrush current vacuum arcs during capacitor bank making process, but also has a relatively low chopping current value. This contributes to reducing the post-arc restrike probabilities in interrupting of the small capacitive currents.