Chemical methods to produce mesoporous thin films with tunable properties

Abstract

Mesoporous thin films (MTFs) possess very high surface area, uniform organized pores, and tailored surfaces. Novel properties of such materials depend on the sizes of mesopores (2?50 nm diameter range), pore-array architecture, interconnectivity of pores, wall nature, surface functionality, and pore contents. These features can be finely controlled through chemical and physical processes such as sol-gel chemistry, self-assembly, and local reactivity. Mesoporous structures can be explored in a variety of applications, such as photocatalysts, separation membranes, perm-selective electrodes, drug delivery, optical sensors, or bioactive surfaces. In this chapter, we present a concise review on the structures and characterizations of these exciting materials and discuss chemical methodologies to produce them. We also describe interesting systems in which the design and synthesis of these materials lead to tunable MTFs with exploitable properties.