Abstract
Electroplating has been favored to date as a surface treatment technology in various industries in the development of semiconductors, automobiles, ships, and steel due to its advantages of being a simple, solution-based process, with low cost and high throughput. Recently, classical electroplating has been reborn as an advanced manufacturing process for functional materials by combining it with unconventional optical three-dimensional (3D) nanofabrication techniques capable of generating polymer templates with high-resolution 3D periodic nanostructures. The bottom-up filling behavior of electroplating rising from a seed layer makes it possible to densely fill the nanoporous network of the template with heterogeneous inorganic materials. At this time, understanding and optimizing the process parameters (e.g., additive, current density, type of current waveform, etc.) of electroplating is critical for defect control. In addition, since electroplating is generally performed near room temperature, unlike other thin film deposition techniques, structural damage to the polymer template by heat during electroplating is almost negligible. Based on the excellent compatibility of electroplating and optical 3D nanofabrication, innovative functional materials with 3D periodic nanostructures targeting electrochemical or energy-related applications have been created. In this mini review, a strategy for producing functional materials with 3D periodic nanostructures through a templating process will be covered, and the recent cases of successful applications to electrodes for energy storage devices, electrocatalysts, and thermoelectric materials will be summarized. We will also discuss technical issues that need to be considered in the process to improve the quality of the resulting functional materials with 3D nanoarchitectures.
Highlights
Around the 2000s, with the explosive increase in interest in the experimental realization of three-dimensional (3D) photonic crystals in the academic world, various unconventional techniques optimized to manufacture nanostructured materials with 3D structural periodicity at the sub-micron level were developed
Optical approaches derived from photolithography, which is a mature technology in the semiconductor industry, can precisely control 3D periodic nanostructures with high resolution and have great potential to advance into industrial technologies
We looked at strategies and examples of implementing inorganic materials with 3D periodic nanostructures through template-assisted electroplating using 3D nanostructured templates prepared by unconventional 3D optical lithography
Summary
Around the 2000s, with the explosive increase in interest in the experimental realization of three-dimensional (3D) photonic crystals in the academic world, various unconventional techniques optimized to manufacture nanostructured materials with 3D structural periodicity at the sub-micron level were developed. Such types of bicontinuous nanocomposites have the advantage of being able to independently control heterogeneous physical functions that cannot be achieved through traditional mixture-based nanocomposite systems [45] In response to these technical demands, research on the development of functional materials with 3D periodic nanostructures for non-photonic applications is actively progressing by combining unconventional optical 3D lithography with conventional thin film deposition techniques such as chemical vapor deposition (CVD), physical vapor deposition (PVD), atomic layer deposition (ALD), sol–gel reaction, and electrochemical deposition. Unlike other infiltration techniques that generally require a high-temperature environment [48], electroplating, which is based on a solution process near room temperature, can transform the constituent materials of 3D nanostructures without causing heat-induced structural collapse to the polymer template, with a relatively low melting point generally below 200 ◦ C Through this strategy, several research groups have successfully reported a new class of functional materials produced by the combination of optical 3D nanofabrication and electroplating. We would like to introduce the combining advanced optical 3D lithography and electroplating and discuss in-depth important recent achievements functionalcritical nanostructures generated by combining technical issues that related shouldto be3D considered in the fabrication process [50,51,52].advanced optical
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