(41d) Novel Metal Nanoporous Structures Fabricated From Reduction Reaction On Aluminum Nanoparticle Templates through Galvanic Replacement Mechanism

With the development of nanoscience in the last two decades, our ability to manipulate nanostructures and nanomaterials has improved significantly. Excellent examples include the synthesis and novel property characterization of carbon nanotubes, semiconducting or metallic nanowires, and quantum dots. Reduction reaction directly on nanoparticles through galvanic replacement reaction has been used to synthesize many novel nanostructures including nanoshell, nanobox, nanorattle, etc. However, only a few template materials including silver (Ag) and palladium (Pd) have been reported so far. This is because the redox potentials for the currently used template materials are too positive to reduce many other metals ions. In the present study, we report the use of aluminum (Al) nanoparticles for the reduction process through galvanic replacement reaction. The advantage for using Al nanoparticles is its large negative redox potential that could reduce many types of metal ions and thus make numerous nanostructures for new metal species. We have demonstrated that nanoporous structures of nickel, copper, cobalt can be successfully fabricated from the Al nanoparticles. These nanostructures have been characterized by SEM, TEM, EDAX and XRD. The applications of these novel materials with high surface area, such as catalysts, are under investigation.