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Silica films with a single-crystalline mesoporous structure

Nature Materials volume 3, pages 651–656 (2004)Cite this article

Abstract

Films of mesoporous materials attract broad interest because of their wide applicability in the fields of optics and electronics. Although many of these films have a regular local porous structure, the structural regularity has not been used practically yet because of difficulties in its control on macroscopic scales. Here, we demonstrate the preparation of mesoporous silica films whose porous structure can be described as a single crystal, that is, a long-range order of cage-like pores is maintained over centimetre scales. These films have a three-dimensional hexagonal (space group P63/mmc) porous structure, and the in-plane arrangement of the pores is strictly controlled by a polymeric substrate surface that has been treated by rubbing. This new class of single-crystalline films with mesoscopic periodic structure is a significant breakthrough in bottom-up nanotechnology, and could lead to novel devices, for example, optics in a soft X-ray region, and quantum electronics.

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Figure 1
Figure 2: TEM images of the as-grown film with a single-crystalline porous structure prepared using the surfactant mixture of C16EO10/C16EO20 = 2:1.
Figure 3: XRD patterns of the as-grown single-crystalline film prepared using the surfactant mixture of C16EO10/C16EO20 = 2:1.
Figure 4: Variation of the porous structure with the surfactant mixing ratio and the reaction time, and the proposed mechanism for the in-plane regular stacking of the spherical micelles.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge O. Terasaki for useful discussions about the TEM images, and Y. Sugahra, T. Yonehara and O. Albrecht for helpful comments. The work was partially supported by Grant-in-Aids for COE research (Molecular nanoengineering) and 21COE program (Practical nanochemistry), MEXT, Japan.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Leading-Edge Technology Development Headquarters, Canon Inc. 5-1 Morinosato-Wakamiya, Atsugi-shi, Kanagawa, 243-0193, Japan

    Hirokatsu Miyata, Masatoshi Watanabe, Takashi Noma, Kazuhiro Takada & Taihei Mukaide

  2. Department of Applied Chemistry, Waseda University, 3-4-1 Ohkubo, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, 169-8555, Japan

    Takashi Suzuki, Ayumu Fukuoka, Takeshi Sawada & Kazuyuki Kuroda

  3. Kagami Memorial Laboratory for Materials Science and Technology, Waseda University, 2-8-26 Nishiwaseda, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, 169-0051, Japan

    Kazuyuki Kuroda

  4. CREST, Japan Science and Technology Agency, Japan

    Kazuyuki Kuroda

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  1. Hirokatsu Miyata
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Correspondence to Hirokatsu Miyata.

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Miyata, H., Suzuki, T., Fukuoka, A. et al. Silica films with a single-crystalline mesoporous structure. Nature Mater 3, 651–656 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat1184

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