Abstract
In this study, by taking advantage of the nucleation and growth control of templated electroless plating, a novel approach to fabricate metallic materials with single gyroid (SG) texture using polymer template with double gyroid (DG) texture is suggested. Nanoporous polystyrene (PS) with DG texture is prepared from the self-assembly of polystyrene-b-poly(L-lactide) (PS-PLLA) followed by hydrolysis of PLLA block, and then used as a template for templated electroless plating. With pore-filling of the dilute Pd solution to the PS template, homogeneously distributed Pd clusters within the PS template can be prepared by using hydrazine for the reduction of Pd ions, giving one single Pd nuclei for the growth of SG-structured Ni. Subsequently, the Ni deposition using the Pd nuclei as catalytic site can be carried out to form SG-structured Ni. Finally, nanoporous Ni with SG-structured texture can be obtained after removal of the PS template by washing with dichloromethane. With the novel approach, SG-structured Ni with controlled particle radius from hundreds nm to micrometer can be prepared by tuning the growth time for the Ni deposition. Furthermore, tunable lattice constant of the SG-structured Ni and the corresponding filling ratio of the nanoporous Ni can be created from the pre-synthesized PS template with different molecular weights and compositions. To effectively achieve versatile purposes for optical applications, SG-structured Au is synthesized via the novel method as described above. As a result, this approach develop a platform technology to fabricate SG-structured metallic nanomaterials with versatile characteristic for novel properties from the nucleation and growth of templated electroless plating using self-assembled DG-structured block copolymers (BCPs) as templates.