Nanoporous carbon materials have attracted extensive interest in advanced technologies due to their lightweight nature, mechanical robustness, chemical stability, and electrical properties. However, current approaches for fabricating nanoporous carbon often face challenges in simultaneously achieving precise structural patterning, controllable pore architectures, and excellent mechanical performance.
A research team from Westlake University has developed a new fabrication strategy based on a technique called Mix-ice lithography (Mix-IL), which enables the direct construction of nanoporous carbon structures with tunable pores and complex geometries.
The newly developed method uses a mixed ice resist composed of water and anisole. Under low-temperature electron beam irradiation, the two components play complementary roles: water ice is selectively removed through electron-induced decomposition, creating nanoscale pores, while anisole undergoes molecular restructuring to form a stable amorphous carbon framework. By integrating these two processes within a single fabrication step, the method achieves simultaneous control over nanoscale patterning and pore formation.
Compared with conventional fabrication approaches that often require complex processing procedures, chemical treatments, or high-temperature carbonization, Mix-IL directly produces nanoporous carbon structures without chemical developers or thermal pyrolysis. The technique enables flexible regulation of pore structures and material architectures, allowing control over pore size down to the sub-10 nanometer scale, porosity across a broad range, and diverse micro- and nanoscale patterns.
Beyond structural control, the fabricated nanoporous carbon exhibits a combination of mechanical strength and elasticity that is difficult to achieve using existing methods. The material maintains excellent elastic recovery while achieving high stiffness, demonstrating its potential for lightweight and mechanically robust applications.
The unique characteristics of the ice-based fabrication process also provide excellent compatibility with unconventional and fragile substrates. The researchers successfully demonstrated direct fabrication of patterned nanoporous carbon on delicate surfaces, including dragonfly wings, highlighting the potential of this approach for applications involving flexible, biological, and non-planar systems.
This work provides a new pathway for manufacturing nanoporous carbon materials with both structural design freedom and mechanical reliability. The developed technology may open new opportunities for future applications in flexible electronics, microelectromechanical systems, and bio-integrated devices.
Science Bulletin
Experimental study