Self-assembly of uniform nanoporous silica fibers

Self-assembly of nanoporous silica shapes is of great interest for modern nanotechnology because of uniform pore size, simplicity, and low cost of production. However, there are two major problems that prevent broad use of the self-assembly process. First, the process brings too broad a variety of the assembled shapes. Secondly, the yield of the desired shapes is far from 100%. Here, we describe a process of acidic self-assembly of silica shapes that is free of both of these problems. The process described results in virtually a 100% of very uniform fibers. Each fiber has a hexagonal cross section of approximately 2 /spl mu/m and a length of approximately 5 /spl mu/m. The highly uniform pores with periodicity of 3.8 nm are unidirectional along the fiber. These new fibers can be used in chromatography, drug delivery, manufacturing nanowires, nanoreactors for "one-dimensional" chemistry, etc.