Morphological control of surfactant-templated metal oxide films

We discuss here recent developments of note in the synthesis of self-assembled surfactant-mesophase templated films using a sol-gel route. First, the formation of metal oxide (non-silica) films using this method has become a highly active area of research, with careful studies unlocking the key processing parameters needed to successfully synthesize these materials. Also, the control of pore orientation in these self-assembled materials using confinement or surface modification has also become extremely important. Finally, we identify research directions we believe will yield important new advances in this area of materials science/chemistry. (C) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.