On the microstructure of nanoporous gold: an x-ray diffraction study

The evolution of the grain structure, internal stresses, and the lattice misorientations of nanoporous gold (npAu) during dealloying of bulk (3D) Ag-Au alloy samples was studied by various in-situ and ex-situ X-ray diffraction techniques including powder and Laue diffraction. The experiments reveal that the dealloying process preserves the original crystallographic structure, but leads to a small spread in orientations within individual grains. Furthermore, most grains develop in-plane tensile stress. The feature size of the developing nanoporous structure increases with increasing dealloying time.