The Role of Computer Simulation in Nanoporous Metals—A Review

Abstract

Nanoporous metals (NPMs) have proven to be all-round candidates in versatile and diverse applications. In this decade, interest has grown in the fabrication, characterization and applications of these intriguing materials. Most existing reviews focus on the experimental and theoretical works rather than the numerical simulation. Actually, with numerous experiments and theory analysis, studies based on computer simulation, which may model complex microstructure in more realistic ways, play a key role in understanding and predicting the behaviors of NPMs. In this review, we present a comprehensive overview of the computer simulations of NPMs, which are prepared through chemical dealloying. Firstly, we summarize the various simulation approaches to preparation, processing, and the basic physical and chemical properties of NPMs. In this part, the emphasis is attached to works involving dealloying, coarsening and mechanical properties. Then, we conclude with the latest progress as well as the future challenges in simulation studies. We believe that highlighting the importance of simulations will help to better understand the properties of novel materials and help with new scientific research on these materials.

Skeletonization, Geometrical Analysis, and Finite Element Modeling of Nanoporous Gold Based on 3D Tomography Data

“…Besides very fundamental calculations such as density functional theory (DFT) [13] and molecular dynamics simulations (MD) [11,12,14], there are several simplified finite element method (FEM) models [6,[13][14][15][16][17][18] and even analytical models [19][20][21][22][23][24] for predicting mechanical properties. In many modeling approaches the complex NPG Before the skeleton data were translated into the skeleton FEM beam model, the geometrical data were thoroughly analyzed.…”

Study of the Coarsening of Nanoporous Gold Nanowires by In Situ Scanning Transmission Electron Microscopy During Annealing

“…The ligament pinch‐off is not the only process reported during the coarsening of NPG, but the collapsing of ligament is also noticed . To observe this phenomenon, a nanowire with a small pore size, which allows a short distance between ligaments and therefore less plastic work required to bend the ligaments, and with a ligament size above 10 nm to avoid spontaneous collapsing have to be chosen . It is important to stress here that the plastic work needed to bend a ligament is the amount of work required to move a dislocation across it.…”

“…[17,36,37] To observe this phenomenon, a nanowire with a small pore size, which allows a short distance between ligaments and therefore less plastic work required to bend the ligaments, and with a ligament size above 10 nm to avoid spontaneous collapsing have to be chosen. [17,38] It is important to stress here that the plastic work needed to bend a ligament is the amount of work required to move a dislocation across it. For this experiment, a nanowire with an initial pore size and ligament diameter of 11 and 16 nm, respectively, corresponding to a ligament/pore size ratio of 1.4, was studied www.advancedsciencenews.com www.pss-rapid.com (Figure 3a).…”

Modelling and Microstructural Characterization of Sintered Metallic Porous Materials

“…In the literature, different ways of modelling diffusion bridges can be found [23,26,36,37]. However, these methods are not effective in the computer simulation of complex structures with a large amount of batch grains of different sizes.…”