Facile fabrication of hollow nanoporous gold tubes using a near-net shaping method

In inertial confined fusion (ICF) experiments, hollow nanoporous gold (NPG) tube serves as the desirable component for hohlraum because of its significant radiation opacity. Nevertheless, preparing NPG tube by micromachining is complicated and unfriendly for practical application. Here, a near-net shaping technology, including an alternative electroplating, a heat treatment process and a two-step corrosion method, is developed to fabricate NPG tube without complicated micromachining process. The heat treatment parameters are optimized, and the phase evolution from electroplated coating to NPG tube is investigated in detail. Furthermore, it is also studied here that the formation mechanism of the microstructure. A hollow nanoporous gold tube with fine and uniform pore size (∼35 nm) is successfully obtained. The length, inner diameter and thickness of the NPG tube are 10 mm, 1 mm and 90 μm, respectively.