Chapter 18 - Bioinspired Porous Materials

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the synthesis of bioinspired porous solids. The biological concept gives inspiration for creating a new generation of synthetic materials and devices with advanced structures and functions. Besides the astonishing ability of self-organization and complex functionality, biological specimens are attractive with their shapes and patterns that are unapproachable by the synthetic materials. The process of petrification is able to replicate the intimate organization of the biological structure. However, the petrification is a long and difficult to completely reproduce under laboratory conditions process. Hence, methods applicable to laboratory timescale and conditions will have to be developed in order to obtain molecular-scale replicas of biological templates. The incorporation of zeolites in morphological constructions issued from natural templates is the unique way to obtain a hierarchical porous structure exhibiting distinct micropores. Chemical compositions of bioinspired porous solids also vary in a very wide range as the oxides are largely presented. Among them, silica is probably the most broadly explored. Following the silica, probably the SiC and SiSiC ceramics issued from wood templates were the most widely studied. Noble metals, for instance Au, Pt, Pd, have been employed in the preparation of meso- and macroporous constructs. Finally, carbon and polymer replicas of biotemplates were obtained. Combinations of the above substances were also employed in the replication of biotemplates. Although, there is a long way to the use of inorganic porous material prepared via utilization of sacrificial natural templates, the interest in such materials is extremely high.