A thermal treatment approach to reduce microscale void formation in blanket nanoporous gold films

This paper illustrates the effect of thermal treatment and alloy composition on the microstructures of gold–silver films and subsequently dealloyed nanoporous gold films. Even though thermal treatment of alloys increases tensile stress in gold–silver films, it mitigates the formation of microscale voids during dealloying. The voids in the dealloyed film are too large to be rationalized by relaxation of the residual stress. The interplay between volume shrinkage during dealloying, residual stress and thermally induced deformation is discussed to explain void formation.