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Updated: Mar 22, 2026

Preparation of Macroporous Epitaxial Quartz Films on Silicon by Chemical Solution Deposition
Published on: December 21, 2015
A Single-Crystalline Mesoporous Quartz Superlattice
Takamichi Matsuno1, Yoshiyuki Kuroda2, Masaki Kitahara1
1Department of Applied Chemistry, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Waseda University, Ohkubo 3-4-1, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, 169-8555, Japan.
Abstract:
There has been significant interest in the crystallization of nanostructured silica into α-quartz because of its physicochemical properties. We demonstrate a single-crystalline mesoporous quartz superlattice, a silica polymorph with unprecedentedly ordered hierarchical structures on both the several tens of nanometers scale and the atomic one. The mesoporous quartz superlattice consists of periodically arranged α-quartz nanospheres whose crystalline axes are mostly oriented in an assembly. The superlattice is prepared by thermal crystallization of amorphous silica nanospheres constituting a colloidal crystal. We found that the deposition of a strong flux of Li(+) only on the surface of silica nanospheres is effective for crystallization.
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