Bestow metal foams with nanostructured surfaces via a convenient electrochemical method for improved device performance

Metal foams have been intensively studied as three-dimensional (3-D) bulk mass-support for various applications because of their high conductivities and attractive mechanical properties. However, the relatively low surface area of conventional metal foams largely limits their performance in applications such as charge storage. Here, we present a convenient electrochemical method for addressing this problem using Cu foams as an example. High surface area Cu foams are fabricated in a one-pot one-step manner by repetitive electrodeposition and dealloying treatments. The obtained Cu foams exhibit greatly improved performance for different applications like surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) substrates and 3-D bulk supercapacitor electrodes.