Mechanism of coarsening and bubble formation in high-genus nanoporous metals

Coarsening of crystalline nanoporous metals involves complex changes in topology associated with the reduction of genus via both ligament pinch-off and void bubble formation. Although void bubbles in metals are often associated with vacancy agglomeration, we use large-scale kinetic Monte Carlo simulations to show that both bubble formation and ligament pinch-off are natural results of a surface-diffusion-controlled solid-state Rayleigh instability that controls changes in the topology of the porous material during coarsening. This result is used to find an effective activation energy for coarsening in nanoporous metals that is associated with the reduction of topological genus, and not the reduction of local surface roughness.