Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 February 2011
Organic-Inorganic hybrid gels with hierarchical well-defined macropores and supramolecularly templated mesopores with long-range orders have been synthesized in the systems of bridged poly(silsesquioxane) systems. Nonionic surfactants such as poly(ethyleneglycol)-poly(propyleneglycol)- poly(ethyleneglycol) triblock copolymers, EOPOEOs, were found to be effective both in inducing the phase separation to give macroporous morphology and in templating the mesopores with narrow size distribution. The number of methylene units in the bridge, changed from 1 to 6 in the present experiments, affected both the phase separation tendency and template strength. In the system containing 1, 2-bis(trimethoxysilyl)ethane, 2D-hexagonal arrangement of mesopores have been prepared in the gel skeleton comprising the well-defined continuous macroporous network with an aid of micelle-stabilizing agent.