Browsing by Author "Morris, Michael A."

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  • Room Temperature Fabrication of Macroporous Lignin Membranes for the Scalable Production of Black Silicon
    (2022-06-13) Prochukhan, Nadezda; O'Brien, Stephen A.; Davó-Quiñonero, Arantxa; Trubetskaya, Anna; Cotter, Eoin; Selkirk, Andrew; Senthamaraikannan, Ramsankar; Ruether, Manuel; McCloskey, David; Morris, Michael A.
     A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
    Rising global demand for biodegradable materials and green sources of energy has brought attention to lignin. Herein, we report a method for manufacturing standalone lignin membranes without additives for the first time to date. We demonstrate a scalable method for macroporous (∼100 to 200 nm pores) lignin membrane production using four different organosolv lignin materials under a humid environment (>50% relative humidity) at ambient temperatures (∼20 °C). A range of different thicknesses is reported with densely porous films observed to form if the membrane thickness is below 100 nm. The fabricated membranes were readily used as a template for Ni2+ incorporation to produce a nickel oxide membrane after UV/ozone treatment. The resultant mask was etched via an inductively coupled plasma reactive ion etch process, forming a silicon membrane and as a result yielding black silicon (BSi) with a pore depth of >1 μm after 3 min with reflectance <3% in the visible light region. We anticipate that our lignin membrane methodology can be readily applied to various processes ranging from catalysis to sensing and adapted to large-scale manufacturing.