How to Separate Copper Nanowires in an Alumina Membrane

So, in my Chemistry Lab we had an experiment to use Whatman alumina membranes and GaIn eutectic to create Nickel nanowires through electrodeposition. So essentially Nickel wire electrode and alumina membrane taped to the copper electrode with GaIn between the membrane and the copper to act as a conductive layer. My group wanted to push beyond just the regular protocol with the extra time we had, so we attempted to perform an identical experiment using copper instead of Nickel. So, everything worked perfectly, we currently have copper nanowires confined inside the alumina membranes and GaIn still stuck on the back of the membranes. The issue is that for Nickel we used Nitric Acid to remove GaIn and then KOH to dissolve the membrane, and we could isolate the nickel wires with magnets, but we obviously can't do so with copper wires. So as of now, we have our copper-GaIn eutectic- Alumina Membranes in solutions of 6M KOH and we do not know how to isolate the copper nanowires. We've thrown around ideas for how to resolve this but nothing certain. So any help would be greatly appreciated!


