Reactive synthesis of porous Cu₃Si compound

Cu₃Si compounds have lots of wonderful applications such as synthesizing nanostructured materials. Here we synthesized a Cu₃Si compound with novel porous microstructure via Cu/Si reaction. The elevated temperature reaction between copper and silicon was not only used to generate Cu₃Si compound, but was also employed to form porous microstructure. The obtained porous compound is mainly composed of Cu₃Si phase, and the size of dispersed micropores varies about 10-150 μm by changing the silicon content in Cu/Si green compact. Moreover, the porous compound exhibits very low thermal diffusivity. It is believed that during being synthesized at 900 °C, the compact transforms to Cu₃Si compound, while a quantity of liquid Cu₃Si phase separates from compact and generates tiny particles on its surface, so forms porous microstructure.