FURI | Spring 2018

Nanoporous Morphology of Dealloyed Parent Phase Ordered and Disordered Cu3Au Alloys

Nanoporous gold (NPG) has found revolutionary applications in energy and biomedicine-related fields. Despite this, there is little understanding of the detailed self-organization process during dealloying, which develops the bicontinuous solid-void morphology. By understanding that NPG adopts the same structure and orientation as its parent phase material (PPM), comparing the NPG structures created from compositionally identical, yet crystallographically different PPM will shed some light on the mechanisms that take place in forming the structure. In this research, ordered and disordered Cu3Au alloys were dealloyed and analyzed for morphological differences that could help to elucidate these mechanisms.