A diffusion model for liquid metal dealloying. Application to NiCu precursors dealloyed in liquid Ag

Liquid metal dealloying is a promising technique to elaborate porous metallic materials with potential applications for catalysis and energy storage. It consists in the selective dissolution of an element out of a precursor alloy by immersing it in a liquid bath. To model this process, we introduce a one-dimensional diffusion model that relies on the thermodynamic properties of the ternary system, and on a maximum velocity criterion of the reaction front. The model is compared to experimental measurements conducted on NiCu samples dealloyed in liquid Ag. Regarding the kinetics, the model enable to reach experimental time-scales, replicate experimental trends, and reveal the influence of the ligament structure on the dealloying rate. Also, by assuming thermodynamic equilibria between solid and liquid phases in the dealloyed region, the microstructure gradient obtained numerically is in satisfactory agreement with experimental measurements. These numerical results are obtained without adjustable parameters, which opens the possibility to predict dealloyed microstructures as function of the process parameters (precursor and bath composition, dealloying time and temperature, etc.).