Watching mesoporous metal films grow during templated electrodeposition with in situ SAXS

Richardson, S. J., Burton, M. R., Luo, X., Staniec, P. A., Nandhakumar, I. S., Terrill, N. J., Elliott, J. M. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7469-4154 and Squires, A. M. (2017) Watching mesoporous metal films grow during templated electrodeposition with in situ SAXS. Nanoscale, 9 (29). pp. 10227-10232. ISSN 2040-3364 doi: 10.1039/c7nr03321d

Abstract/Summary

In this paper, we monitor the real-time growth of mesoporous platinum during electrodeposition using small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS). Previously, we have demonstrated that platinum films featuring the ‘single diamond’ (Fd3m) morphology can be produced from ‘double diamond’ (Pn3m) lipid cubic phase templates; the difference in symmetry provides additional scattering signals unique to the metal. Taking advantage of this, we present simultaneous in situ SAXS/electrochemical measurement as the platinum nanostructures grow within the lipid template. This measurement allows us to correlate the nanostructure appearance with the deposition current density and to monitor the evolution of the orientational and lateral ordering of the lipid and platinum during deposition and after template removal. In other periodic metal nanomaterials deposited within any of the normal topology liquid crystal, mesoporous silica or block copolymer templates previously published, the template and emerging metal have the same symmetry, so such a study has not been possible previously.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/71887
Identification Number/DOI	10.1039/c7nr03321d
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Life Sciences > School of Chemistry, Food and Pharmacy > Department of Chemistry
Uncontrolled Keywords	General Materials Science
Publisher	The Royal Society of Chemistry
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