Mesoporous Silica-Based Materials for Electronics-Oriented Applications

Abstract

Electronics, and nanoelectronics in particular, represent one of the most promising branches of technology. The search for novel and more efficient materials seems to be natural here. Thus far, silicon-based devices have been monopolizing this domain. Indeed, it is justified since it allows for significant miniaturization of electronic elements by their densification in integrated circuits. Nevertheless, silicon has some restrictions. Since this material is applied in the bulk form, the miniaturization limit seems to be already reached. Moreover, smaller silicon-based elements (mainly processors) need much more energy and generate significantly more heat than their larger counterparts. In our opinion, the future belongs to nanostructured materials where a proper structure is obtained by means of bottom-up nanotechnology. A great example of a material utilizing nanostructuring is mesoporous silica, which, due to its outstanding properties, can find numerous applications in electronic devices. This focused review is devoted to the application of porous silica-based materials in electronics. We guide the reader through the development and most crucial findings of porous silica from its first synthesis in 1992 to the present. The article describes constant struggle of researchers to find better solutions to supercapacitors, lower the k value or redox-active hybrids while maintaining robust mechanical properties. Finally, the last section refers to ultra-modern applications of silica such as molecular artificial neural networks or super-dense magnetic memory storage.

Removal of Pesticides from Waters by Adsorption: Comparison between Synthetic Zeolites and Mesoporous Silica Materials. A Review

“…These materials can be synthesized with different porosity, morphology, particle sizes, as well as with different functional groups, and hence, their physical and chemical properties can be tuned [61,62]. Usually, they have an enormous specific surface area (1000 m 2 /g or more), homogeneous pore distribution, and large volume and size of pores [63,64]. Generally, MCM-41 has a hexagonal structure with a pore diameter of 2.5-6 nm.…”

Synthesis of Vertically Aligned Porous Silica Thin Films Functionalized by Silver Ions

“…Despite their extraordinary structure, the real potential of porous silica thin films became clear after taking into account the possibility of their functionalization [ 4 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 ]. From this point of view vertically aligned mesoporous silica layer can be treated as a unique template that can be precisely modified for particular needs via the deposition of corresponding units (functional groups [ 29 , 30 ], molecules [ 31 , 32 ], nanoparticles [ 33 , 34 ], nanowires [ 35 , 36 , 37 ], etc.…”

A Low-Dimensional Layout of Magnetic Units as Nano-Systems of Combinatorial Logic: Numerical Simulations

“…Let us consider the layout of regular magnetic units. When we assume suitably small dimensions of the units, the fabrication of a super-dense memory storage, magnetic nanosensors, molecular neural networks or combinational logic nanocircuit becomes possible [ 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 ]. Importantly, the last-mentioned application seems to be promising because such systems can be used in many emerging technologies, such as encryption, encoding, or data compression.…”