Nanoporous copper and copper oxide with hollow microsphere structure prepared by polystyrene template-assisted synthesis

The use of porous metals with highly porous nano- or submicro-structured walls for energetic materials applications has been considered in recent years. The aim of this work is to construct a stable porous structure for synthetize of copper azide primary explosive. For this purpose, hollow copper and copper oxide microspheres were successfully prepared by electroless plating using polystyrene (PS) templates with diameter of 529 nm. SEM and XRD analysis were conducted to characterize the microstructure and composition of the products, and ICP was used to measure the variation of Cu2+ concentration during plating. Results show that the amount of copper deposit increased with increasing pH value. By adding enough NaOH solution during plating, copper ions could be all reduced while the microstructure of copper coatings destroyed. The addition of stabilizers had a negative effect on PS/Cu core-shell structures. Hollow copper microspheres with shell thickness of 100 nm were obtained by sinter...