An Efficient Route to Mesoporous Silica Films with Perpendicular Nanochannels

摘要

The fabrication of mesoporous silica films with well-defined morphologies offers tremendous opportunity for device structures. In particular the generation of a mesoporous silica film with cylindrical nanochannels of prescribed diameters oriented normal to the substrate holds great promise for applications in catalysis, bio-molecular separations, sensors, photonics, synthesis of aligned metallic nanowires' and carbon nanotubes and for guest-host applications with electrically and/or optically active species. However fabricating well-defined, robust films by conventional evaporation-induced cooperative self-assembly approaches has proven to be extremely challenging.