Dealloying and Dealloyed Materials

A successful working model for nanoporosity evolution during dealloying was introduced 15 years ago. Since that time, the field has rapidly expanded, with research groups from across the world studying dealloying and dealloyed materials. Dealloying has grown into a rich field, with some groups focusing on fundamentals and mechanisms of dealloying, other groups creating new porous metals and alloys, and even more groups studying their properties. Dealloying was originally considered only in the context of corrosion, but now it is considered a facile self-organization technique to fabricate high-surface-area, bicontinuous nanoporous materials. Owing to their high interfacial area and the versatility of metallic materials, nanoporous metals have found application in catalysis, sensing, actuation, electrolytic and ultracapacitor materials, high-temperature templates/scaffolds, battery anodes, and radiation damage-tolerant materials. In this review, we discuss the fundamental materials principles underlying the formation of dealloyed materials and then look at two major applications: catalysis and nanomechanics.