Nanoporous silica thin films with cubic ordering synthesized by chemical bath deposition

We synthesized nanoporous silica thin films on solid substrates through chemical bath deposition and investigated their structural properties using small-angle x-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, and scanning electron microscopy. The nanoporous silica is made of organic and inorganic molecules, interacting through a sol–gel process. The as-deposited films appear to grow in a continuous way as the bath deposition time elapses and consequently cubic ordering can be found in the nanostructured silica films. Through a properly controlled synthesis and annealing process, the present cubic nanoporous materials are expected to have a wide range of applications such as molecular detectors, a nanoscale reaction matrix, and molecular transport channels.