• Journal of Surface Science and Engineering
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.16-22
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• 2007

Recently, mesoporous metallic materials are becoming more and more important in various applications like catalysts, electrochemical detectors, batteries, and fuel cells because of their high surface area. Among the various methods for manufacturing mesoporous structure, surfactant templating method followed by electroplating has been tried in this study. A mesoporous metallic film was prepared by electrodeposition from electroplating solution mixed with surfactant template. Nonionic type lyotropic liquid crystalline surfactant, Brij56, and nickel acetate based solution were selected as a template material and electroplating solution, respectively. To determine the content of surfactant forming a hexagonal column structure, the phase diagram of electroplating solution and surfactant mixture has been exploited by polarized optical microscopy equipped with heating and cooling stage. Nickel films were electroplated on Cu foil by stepwise potential input method to alleviate the concentration polarization occurred during the electroplating process. TEM and XRD analyses were performed to characterize the size and shape of mesostructures in manufactured nickel films, and electrochemical characterization was also carried out using cyclic voltammetry.