Lyotropic liquid crystal templating of groups 11 and 12 metal films

Liquid crystal templating has been used to produce metal films with nanometer-sized pores. While successful templating procedures have been reported for metals from some groups of elements (e.g., groups 9 and 10), no such reports are available for other groups. This work investigates liquid crystal templating procedures for metals from groups 11 and 12. TEM indicates that permanent mesoporous structures are obtained for templated cadmium while copper forms mesoporous structures only temporarily. Silver, gold and zinc could not be templated at all. Reasons for these observations are briefly discussed, underlining the importance of various factors influencing the templating process.