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Nanoporous Cu created by the reduction of CuO dispersions

  • Composites & nanocomposites
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Abstract

Nanoporous metals can serve in unique functional applications due to their high surface area, and they are often made through dealloying, which removes a sacrificial element through chemical etching and leaves a nanoporous matrix of the remaining element(s). Several variations on this technique allow for a wider variety of metals and alloys to be processed, but simple, scalable, and reliable production of nanoporous devices is still not a reality using the majority of techniques and alloy systems. Oxide reduction may provide a suitable alternative, and in this work, nanoporous Cu was produced via oxide reduction in the Cu–CuO system. This method uses mechanical milling to create a metal matrix composite powder primarily composed of CuO that is reduced under hydrogen to leave pure Cu behind. It requires no harsh chemicals, and it uses modest temperatures and short reaction times. Furthermore, it is fully compatible with traditional powder metallurgy, making it readily scalable. Powder compacts were also processed to track the geometric changes associated with each composition and demonstrate that device creation is feasible, even with the basic process applied here. This work reveals important parameters associated with these materials by incorporating a wide range of milling times and compositions, with shorter milling times and higher oxide concentrations providing the finest pore sizes, the highest porosity, and the greatest simplicity.

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Acknowledgements

MA is particularly grateful to Constance Ziemian and the Mechanical Engineering faculty of Bucknell University for their support during the initial stages of this investigation, and funding through the Department of Mechanical Engineering. The authors would like to thank ThermoFisher for their support in collecting the FIB sections on the 75% CuO sample. We are grateful to Hitachi HighTech for providing the FIB section images for the 90% CuO sample. MA is also grateful for the financial support of this work by the National Science Foundation [CAREER award #2035473].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Bucknell University, 1 Dent Dr, Lewisburg, PA, 17837, USA

    Derek Jung

  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Liberty University, 1971 University Blvd, Lynchburg, VA, 24515, USA

    Beck Boan, Noel Allapatt & Mark Atwater

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  2. Beck Boan
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Contributions

DJ—Investigation, Writing—Review and Editing; BB—Investigation, Writing—Review and Editing; NA—Investigation, Writing—Review and Editing; MA—Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Writing—Original Draft; Supervision, Project Administration, Funding Acquisition.

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Correspondence to Mark Atwater.

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The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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Handling Editor: N. Ravishankar.

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Jung, D., Boan, B., Allapatt, N. et al. Nanoporous Cu created by the reduction of CuO dispersions. J Mater Sci 58, 12635–12649 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-023-08817-5

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