Fabrication of highly ordered porous structures

We describe a simple method for the fabrication of highly ordered porous st ructures. That is, utilizing capillary forces, ultrafine particles are dire ctly used to assemble themselves in the voids of template while the templat e is being assembled. The highly ordered porous structures with larger area and uniform orientation can be produced after removing the template. The m ajority of the single domains with uniform orientation prepared can reach 0 .1 mm(2) in area. Scanning electron microscope images and transmission spec trum of these samples have confirmed the success of this simple method. (C) 2000 American Institute of Physics. [S0003- 6951(00)05350-X].