Synthesis of porous silica foams via a novel vacuum-induced sol-gel method

Mesoporous silica foams having a macroporous skeleton and well-ordered internal mesoporous structure were synthesized by a novel vacuum-induced sol-gel process. This contrasts with the usual route involving expensive sacrificial microspheres. The resulting materials had a tri-modal pore size distribution and were characterized by nitrogen physisorption, X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy.