Chemists fabricate 'impossible' material: Like graphene, periodic mesoporous hydridosilica (meso-HSiO1.5) consists of a honeycomb-like lattice structure. Theoretically, the structure should be so thermodynamically unstable that the mesopores (the holes in the honeycomb) should immediately collapse into a denser form, HSiO1.5, upon the removal of the template on which the material was synthesized.
In their study, the researchers synthesized the mesoporous material on an aqueous acid-catalyzed template. When they removed the template, they discovered that the impossible material remains stable up to 300 °C. The researchers attribute the stability to hydrogen bonding effects and steric effects, the latter of which are related to the distance between atoms. Together, these effects contribute to the material’s mechanical stability by making the mesopores resistant to collapse upon removal of the template.
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