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Formation of three-dimensional bicontinuous structures via molten salt dealloying studied in real-time by in situ synchrotron X-ray nano-tomography

Three-dimensional bicontinuous porous materials formed by dealloying contribute significantly to various applications including catalysis, sensor development and energy storage. This work studies a method of molten salt dealloying via real-time in situ synchrotron three-dimensional X-ray nano-tomogr...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Liu, Xiaoyang, Ronne, Arthur, Yu, Lin-Chieh, Liu, Yang, Ge, Mingyuan, Lin, Cheng-Hung, Layne, Bobby, Halstenberg, Phillip, Maltsev, Dmitry S., Ivanov, Alexander S., Antonelli, Stephen, Dai, Sheng, Lee, Wah-Keat, Mahurin, Shannon M., Frenkel, Anatoly I., Wishart, James F., Xiao, Xianghui, Chen-Wiegart, Yu-chen Karen
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8190292/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34108466
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-23598-8
Descripción
Sumario:Three-dimensional bicontinuous porous materials formed by dealloying contribute significantly to various applications including catalysis, sensor development and energy storage. This work studies a method of molten salt dealloying via real-time in situ synchrotron three-dimensional X-ray nano-tomography. Quantification of morphological parameters determined that long-range diffusion is the rate-determining step for the dealloying process. The subsequent coarsening rate was primarily surface diffusion controlled, with Rayleigh instability leading to ligament pinch-off and creating isolated bubbles in ligaments, while bulk diffusion leads to a slight densification. Chemical environments characterized by X-ray absorption near edge structure spectroscopic imaging show that molten salt dealloying prevents surface oxidation of the metal. In this work, gaining a fundamental mechanistic understanding of the molten salt dealloying process in forming porous structures provides a nontoxic, tunable dealloying technique and has important implications for molten salt corrosion processes, which is one of the major challenges in molten salt reactors and concentrated solar power plants.