Mesoporous materials by templating of liquid crystalline phases

The first mesoporous materials (pore diameter between 20 and 100 Å) were discovered just five eyars ago. A new approach to mesoporous materials by direct templating of lyotropic liquid crystals is reviewed and compared with strategies reported previously. The direct templating method is shown to be very verstile. It is suggested that the resulting materials can almost be termed “second generation” mesoporous materials, mesoporous materials, owing to the broad variety of mesoporous structure and size, high degree of ordering, and low incidence of defects.