Towards ultra-stiff materials: Surface effects on nanoporous materials

The significant rise in the strength and stiffness of porous materials at nanoscale cannot be described by conventional scaling laws. This letter investigates the effective Young's modulus of such materials by taking into account surface effect in a microcellular architecture designed for an ultralight material whose stiffness is an order of magnitude higher than most porous materials. We find that by considering the surface effects the predicted stiffness using Euler-Bernoulli beam theory compares well to experimental data for spongelike nanoporous gold with random microstructures. Analytical results show that, of the two factors influencing the effective Young's modulus, the residual stress is more important than the surface stiffness.