Nanoporous copper fabricated from Zr65Cu17.5Fe10Al7.5 amorphous alloy and its electrocatalytic oxidation performance

A series of bi-continuous and uniform nanoporous structures were fabricated successfully through chemical dealloying from quaternary Zr65Cu17.5Fe10Al7.5 amorphous ribbons in hydrofluoric acid (HF) solutions under a free corrosion condition. Nanoporous structures obtained from dealloying amorphous ribbons for 5 h in 0.02 M,0.035 M and 0.05 M HF solutions have mean pore sizes of 30-40 nm. A three-dimensional bi-continuous nanoporous copper (NPC) structure formed on Zr65Cu17.5Fe10Al7.5 ribbon alloys has pore sizes of 44.91 nm,52.60 nm and 57.37 nm, respectively, after immersion in 0.02 M HF solution for 15 h, 20 h, and 25 h. It shows that the pore size of NPC structure increases with increasing the dealloying time. The cyclic voltammetry (CV) results reveal that all NPC structures have the obvious electrocatalytic ability to the oxidation of (CH2OH)2 solution, compared with the initial amorphous ribbon without oxidation peak on CV curve. Zr-Cu-Fe-Al amorphous alloys can be new candidates for fabricating NPC structures.