An Electroplating-Based Approach to Volumetric Nanomanufacturing and its Application to Energy Storage and Conversion

Abstract

The manufacture of materials with bulk volumes and precisely controlled nanostructure has led to the creation of materials with surprising and useful mechanical and electrical properties. Such manufacturing approaches typically exploit ‘bottom-up’ techniques to create the desired nanostructure, making it difficult to precisely design a priori the material properties. Recently we have developed a ‘top-down’ technique based on sequential electroplating that allows the creation of highly-structured multilayer metallic materials, with precisely designed characteristic lengths in the hundreds of nanometers but volumes of manufactured material in the macro range. This electroplating-based approach also enables batch fabrication of nanostructures. The fabrication relies on automated and repeated multilayer electrodepositions of multiple metallic materials, followed by sacrificial etching of one metal. The remaining structure consists of individualized high-lateralaspect- ratio sub-micron metallic films. As an example application, the use of these materials in energy storage applications, including batteries and DC/DC converters, will be discussed.