title: A combination of hard and soft templating for the fabrication of silica hollow microcoils with nanostructured walls.
abstract: Hollow silica microcoils have been prepared by using functionalized carbon microcoils as hard templates and surfactant or amphiphilic dye aggregates as soft templates. The obtained materials have been characterized by electron and optical microscopy, nitrogen sorption and small angle X-ray scattering. The obtained hollow microcoils resemble the original hard templates in shape and size. Moreover, they have mesoporous walls (pore size ≈ 3 nm) with some domains where pores are ordered in a hexagonal array, originated from surfactant micelles. The obtained silica microcoils also show preferential adsorption of cationic fluorescent dyes. A mechanism for the formation of silica microcoils is proposed.
authors.affiliation: International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory (INL), Av, Mestre José Veiga, Braga, 4715-310, Portugal. crodriguez@inl.int.
authors.forename: Carlos
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Rodriguez-Abreu
authors.forename: Neus
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Vilanova
authors.forename: Conxita
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Solans
authors.forename: Masaki
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ujihara
authors.forename: Toyoko
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Imae
authors.forename: Arturo
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: López-Quintela
authors.forename: Seiji
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Motojima