Silica Nanocasting of Simple Cellulose Derivatives: Towards Chiral Pore Systems with Long‐Range Order and Chiral Optical Coatings

Aqueous solutions of hydroxypropyl cellulose with cholesteric superstructures were employed as templates in a silica nanocasting process, and the resulting pore structures were characterized by polarization microscopy, circular dichroism, X‐ray scattering, transmission electron microscopy, and sorption measurements. Whereas the local pore architecture corresponds to a cast of single cellulose strands and their statistical aggregates, the averaged structure on larger scales keeps the cholesteric character, with the cholesteric pitch just slightly shortened.