Continuous formation of supported cubic and hexagonal mesoporous films by sol–gel dip-coating

Yunfeng Lu, Rahul Ganguli, Celeste A. Drewien, Mark T. Anderson, C. Jeffrey Brinker (), Weilang Gong, Yongxing Guo, Hermes Soyez, Bruce Dunn, Michael H. Huang and Jeffrey I. Zink
Additional contact information
Yunfeng Lu: Sandia National Laboratories and The University of New Mexico/NSF Center for Micro-Engineered Materials, The Advanced Materials Laboratory
Rahul Ganguli: Sandia National Laboratories and The University of New Mexico/NSF Center for Micro-Engineered Materials, The Advanced Materials Laboratory
Celeste A. Drewien: Sandia National Laboratories and The University of New Mexico/NSF Center for Micro-Engineered Materials, The Advanced Materials Laboratory
Mark T. Anderson: Sandia National Laboratories and The University of New Mexico/NSF Center for Micro-Engineered Materials, The Advanced Materials Laboratory
C. Jeffrey Brinker: Sandia National Laboratories and The University of New Mexico/NSF Center for Micro-Engineered Materials, The Advanced Materials Laboratory
Weilang Gong: The Univeristy of New Mexico
Yongxing Guo: The Univeristy of New Mexico
Hermes Soyez: Departments of Materials Science and Chemistry
Bruce Dunn: Departments of Materials Science and Chemistry
Michael H. Huang: University of California
Jeffrey I. Zink: University of California

Nature, 1997, vol. 389, issue 6649, 364-368

Abstract: Abstract Thin films of surfactant-templated mesoporous materials1,2 could find applications in membrane-based separations, selective catalysis and sensors. Above the critical micelle concentration of a bulk silica–surfactant solution, films of mesophases with hexagonally packed one-dimensional channels can be formed at solid–liquid and liquid–vapour interfaces3,4,5. But this process is slow and the supported films3,5 are granular and with the pore channels oriented parallel to the substrate surface, so that transport across the films is not facilitated by the pores. Ogawa6,7 has reported a rapid spin-coating procedure for making transparent mesoporous films, but their formation mechanism, microstructure and pore accessibility have not been elucidated. Here we report a sol–gel-based dip-coating method for the rapid synthesis of continuous mesoporous thin films on a solid substrate. The influence of the substrate generates film mesostructures that have no bulk counterparts, such as composites with incipient liquid-crystalline order of the surfactant–silica phase. We are also able to form mesoporous films of the cubic phase, in which the pores are connected in a three-dimensional network that guarantees their accessibility from the film surface. We demonstrate and quantify this accessibility using a surface-acoustic-wave nitrogen-adsorption technique. We use fluorescence depolarization to monitor the evolution of the mesophase in situ, and see a progression through a sequence of lamellar to cubic to hexagonal structures that has not previously been reported.

Date: 1997
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/38699 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:389:y:1997:i:6649:d:10.1038_38699

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/38699

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().