• Clean Technology
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.38-42
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• 2012

Photonic crystals (PCs) are highly ordered porous materials which have been much attention because of its potential for controlling the light sauces. There are many methods for synthesizing this kind of materials among them we chose the supercritical deposition. With this method the reactants can easily infiltrate into the complex structure. In this paper, supercritical carbon dioxide ($scCO_2$) was used as a reaction medium, which is known as a sustainable solvent due to its nontoxic and noninflammable characteristics. We coated the colloidal template with metal alkoxide by using $scCO_2$ and then obtained macro-porous inverse opals. The reaction was carried out at $40^{\circ}C$ and 80 bar. We synthesized two different inverse opals which called silica and titania inverse opals by use of tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) and titanium isopropoxide (TTIP) as a precursor, respectively.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.32 no.7
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• pp.2178-2182
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• 2011

Recently, the synthesis of ordered macroporous materials has received much attention due to its potential use as photonic band gap materials.$^1$ In this study, we have used the three-dimensional (3D) latex array template impregnated with benzenesulfonic acid (BSA), which is capable of catalyzing the reaction using tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) as a precursor and distilled water. The polystyrene (PS) templates were reacted with TEOS in $scCO_2$ at 40 $^{\circ}C$ and at 80 bar. In the reactor, TEOS was filtrated into the PS particle lattice. After the reaction, porous silica materials were obtained by calcinations of the template. The stability test of the PS template in pure $CO_2$ was conducted before the main experiment. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images showed that the reaction in $scCO_2$ takes place only on the particle surface. This new method using $scCO_2$ has advantages over conventional sol-gel processes in its capability to control the fluid properties such as viscosity and interfacial tension. It has been found that the reaction in $scCO_2$ occurs only on the particle surface, making the proposed technique as more rapid and sustainable method of synthesizing inverse opal materials than conventional coating processes in the liquid phase and in the vapor phase.

• Journal of Powder Materials
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.347-358
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• 2011

Two different schemes were adopted to fabricate ordered macroporous structures with face centered cubic lattice of air spheres. Monodisperse polymeric latex suspension, which was synthesized by emulsifier-free emulsion polymerization, was mixed with metal oxide ceramic nanoparticles, followed by evaporation-induced self-assembly of the mixed hetero-colloidal particles. After calcination, inverse opal was generated during burning out the organic nanospheres. Inverse opals made of silica or iron oxide were fabricated according to this procedure. Other approach, which utilizes ceramic precursors instead of nanoparticles was adopted successfully to prepare ordered macroporous structure of titania with skeleton structures as well as lithium niobate inverted structures. Similarly, two different schemes were utilized to obtain disordered macroporous structures with random arrays of macropores. Disordered macroporous structure made of indium tin oxide (ITO) was obtained by fabricating colloidal glass of polystyrene microspheres with low monodispersity and subsequent infiltration of the ITO nanoparticles followed by heat treatment at high temperature for burning out the organic microspheres. Similar random structure of titania was also fabricated by mixing polystyrene building block particles with titania nanoparticles having large particle size followed by the calcinations of the samples.