One-pot synthesis of hierarchically ordered porous-silica materials with three orders of length scale

An entirely synthetic method is used to produce hierarchically ordered porous silica materials in a one-pot synthesis, with ordering on three different scales; that is, macropores (200-800 nm), interconnecting windows (70-130 nm), ordered mesoporous walls (80 nm) with narrow micropores (<2 nm) in the presence of multiple templates (see picture). At the macro- and mesoscale both ordering and size is controlled whilst at the microscale the interconnectivity is controlled.