Starting with a gold alloy, it is possible to selectively etch away the non-gold element and obtain a tortuous porous network within the gold with pore widths ranging from just
20-4nm. The vast amount of void space makes for large surface areas of approximately 2 m²/g. This new material has found use in such applications as filters, biosensors, chemical catalysts, and
ultra-capacitors. Through annealing, the size of these pores can be modified to fit the need of its particular application. Previous research has been done here at Cornell on nanoporous gold in the
form of bulk films with of 200μm. However, the behavior of thin films of this material of just 200nm in thickness has not yet been studied extensively. The goal of this project was to come up with
a way to create nanoporous gold thin films and to measure the effects of pore coarsening during annealing and the amount of silver remaining in the sample during the etching
procedure.
Publisher
Cornell Center for Materials Research
Date
2005-08-17
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Additional Notes
Acknowledgements: This work was supported by the Cornell Center for Materials Research and the National Science Foundation
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