Here we report an instantaneous formation of high surface area metal nanosponges through a one-step inexpensive method in a completely green solvent, water. Merely by optimizing the concentration of the precursors and the reducing agent, we were able to generate a three-dimensional porous structure made up of nanowire networks. This is a general process, involves a simple, room temperature reduction of metal salts with sodium borohydride, and is therefore scalable to any amount. Further, these nanoporous metals because of their network structures show optical limiting behavior of a true broadband nature that would find applications in optoelectronic nanodevices.
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Krishna et al. (2010) studied this question.