The synthesis of porous materials with macroscopically oriented mesopores interconnected by branched mesopores

Abstract

Mesoporous silica has been extensively studied for a wide variety of applications such as transport and storage vehicles of guest materials, where it is critical but remains challenging to control the pore structure at a macroscopic scale. Herein, aligned carbon nanotube (CNT) arrays with thicknesses of up to millimeters have been used as templates to produce macroscopically oriented mesopores in the resulting silica material. The pore size, length, and number density were tuned by varying the diameter, length, and number density of CNTs. When surfactants were co-assembled with the silica precursor, the produced ordered mesopores from the surfactant could further interconnect the macroscopically oriented mesopores. The sizes, densities, and structures of the ordered mesopores have been controlled by varying the surfactants. This interconnected porous structure provided the material with unique advantages, and the use for adsorption of a guest chemical was studied as a demonstration.