Insights into the Formation of Bicontinuous, Porous CuZn nano/micro Particles by in-situ (S)TEM

Porous materials are highly desirable for catalysis, sensing, actuation, energy storage In that regard, various synthetic methods like chemical/electrochemical dealloying, liquid metal dealloying and Vapor Phase Dealloying (VPD) have been studied Recently, VDP has gained a lot of attention due to its distinct advantage, over the other methods, in having no chemical waste, high material yield and lesser coarsening It exploits the difference in vapor pressure of the constituent elements in an alloy to form a porous structure. Zn, having higher vapor pressure at lower temperature than other metals, have been fairly used as sacrificial moiety in synthesis of porous materials However, all studies, till date, have been ex-situ and hence the developed understanding relied on the post mortem analysis of the synthesized product. Real-time visualization of the process would give complimentary insights into the phenomenon resulting in better predictability for future applications.