Innovative Surfactant Design Enables Synthesis of First Nanoporous Silica with Tri-Continuous Network

Mesoporous materials have pore sizes of just 2-50 nanometers. Now, the first such material consisting of three unlinked, but interpenetrating, pore systems has been synthesized by researchers at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology of A*STAR, Singapore. Jackie Ying and her co-workers explain that since the three channel systems are separated from one another by silica walls, the material is an ideal candidate for applications in drug delivery, catalysis, and separation technologies.

The 'tri-continuous network' material represents a new class of materials, with an increase in complexity over existing bi-continuous network materials that have only two interpenetrating pore systems. Ying says that the interwoven and unconnected tri-continuous pore structure was previously only predicted mathematically. The desire to realize the structure experimentally inspired the researchers to design surfactants to direct the assembly of silica precursors, which can then be converted into the final silica structures.

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