Nanoporous ultrathin films, constituted by a slab less than 100 nm thick and a certain void volume fraction provided by nanopores, are emerging as a new class of systems with a wide range of possible applications, including electrochemistry, energy storage, gas sensing and supercapacitors. The film porosity and morphology strongly affect nanoporous films mechanical properties, the knowledge of which is fundamental for designing films for specific applications. To unveil the relationships among the morphology, structure and mechanical response, a comprehensive and non-destructive investigation of a model system was sought. In this review, we examined the paradigmatic case of a nanoporous, granular, metallic ultrathin film with comprehensive bottom-up and top-down approaches, both experimentals and theoreticals. The granular film was made of Ag nanoparticles deposited by gas-phase synthesis, thus providing a solvent-free and ultrapure nanoporous system at room temperature. The results, bearing generality beyond the specific model system, are discussed for several applications specific to the morphological and mechanical properties of the investigated films, including bendable electronics, membrane separation and nanofluidic sensing.
Keywords: ellipsometry; flexible solar cells; granular nanomaterials; mechanical modeling; mechanical properties; metallic nanoparticles; molecular dynamics; nanomechanics; picosecond photoacoustic; sensors; ultrathin porous films.