Abstract
Nanoporous materials have become indispensable in many fields ranging from photonics,catalysis and semiconductor processing to biosensor infrastructure. Rapid and energy efficientprocess fabrication of these materials is, however, nontrivial. In this communication, wedescribe a simple method for the rapid fabrication of these materials from colloidaldispersions of Polymethyl Silsesquioxane nanoparticles. Nanoparticle–polymer compositesabove the decomposition temperature of the polymer are examined and the entropic gainexperienced by the nanoparticles in this rubric is harnessed to fabricate novel highlyporous films composed of nanoparticles. Optically smooth, hydrophobic films withlow refractive indices (as low as 1.048) and high surface areas (as high as 1325 m2 g−1) have been achieved with this approach. In this communication we address the behavior ofsuch systems that are both temperature and substrate surface energy dependent. Themethod is applicable, in principle, to a variety of nanoparticle–polymer systems to fabricatecustom nanoporous materials.
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