Abstract
Inorganic-organic mesostructured materials obtained by a cooperative organization of inorganic species and surfactants have uniform pore size, ordered pore channel, high surface area, and high thermal stability. Thin films of silica-surfactant mesostructured materials have an ideal morphology; therefore, they could find applications in fields such as catalysis, separation, low-k materials and anti-reflective coatings. Different syntheses have been proposed in order to obtain a wide range of mesoporous geometries to match the specificities of the applications. Besides the preparation conditions, it is very important to characterize film properties for their applications.Film properties of the final mesostructured material are markedly affected by methods of eliminating the organic templates. We use P123 as the templating agents to prepare mesoporous films with larger pores. Emphasis is given on the effect of the template removal by thermal calcination, solvent extraction,UV-O3 irradiation or solvent extraction combined with UV-O3 irradiation.In this thesis the evolution of the film structure and pore properties are studied as a function of the template removal processing by coupling with grazing incident reflectance IR, X-ray reflection (XRR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Kr adsorption, and n&k analyzer. In Chapter 1, an introduction of mesoporous films, thin film characterization techniques and template removal methods are described. In Chapter 2, the experimental condition and characterization techniques are described. In Chapter 3, the preparation parameters are discussed including﹕aging time, template removal methods, HMDS hydrophobic modifications and NH3 pretreatment effects. In Chapter 4, the final conclusion is described.