Nano-assembly and mechanical performance of cold-welded nanoporous Au

The increased diversity of microstructure of nanoporous materials can be expected to greatly expand their functional application in more industries. By incorporating nanoporous metals into cold-welding technology, we report an approach to directly forming the nanoporous materials with various microstructure inside. Nanoporous gold (Au) with ideal bi-continuous nanoporous structures was modeled using spinodal decomposition. Understanding the mechanical properties is the primary step to improve the reliability on the operational performance of nanoporous structures. After the process of cold-welding manufacture, the well-interconnected nanoporous Au was successfully fabricated and the mechanical properties of cold-welded structures were studied. Molecular dynamic simulations on samples with ligament diameter ranging from 3.264 to 6.528 nm and relative density ranging from 0.30 to 0.45 were also carried out to study how these factors affect the assembly process. These results are believed to facilitate the bottom-up nanofabrication and nanoassembly of composite structures for better mechanical performance.