Phys.org  December 13, 2021 The ions released from the metal’s surface are toxic to bacterial cells. But this process is slow when standard copper is used. Researchers in Australia used a special copper mold casting process to make the alloy, arranging copper and manganese atoms into specific formations. The manganese atoms were then removed from the alloy using dealloying leaving pure copper full of tiny microscale and nanoscale cavities in its surface. The resulting copper is composed of comb-like microscale cavities and within each tooth of the comb structure are much smaller nanoscale cavities; it has a massive active surface […]