Colloidal Crystal Templates Direct the Morphologies of Fabricated Porous Cuprous Oxide Particles

Well-controlled porous morphologies and tailored shapes are important for the mesostructures that are produced in material chemistry. Hard template processes provide an efficient way to fabricate porous structures, but the only a few particle shapes can be produced using 3D porous templates. Little is discussed about how such templates affect the shapes of particles. Here, porous Cu 2 O crystals with different shapes and degrees of branching can be electrodeposited using colloidal crystal templates. These templates can produce particle shapes that are exactly the same as those created without templates, but they can also produce different shapes than those fabricated on bare substrates (without a colloidal crystal template). The presence of the colloidal crystal template blocks ion diffusion and changes the deposition environment. Both increased and decreased degrees of branching can be produced when different electrolyte systems are used in conjunction with a colloidal crystal template.