Chemical reduction of three-dimensional silica micro-assemblies into microporous silicon replicas.

The carbothermal reduction of silica into silicon requires the use of temperatures well above the silicon melting point (> or =2,000 degrees C). Solid silicon has recently been generated directly from silica at much lower temperatures (< or =850 degrees C) via electrochemical reduction in molten salts. However, the silicon products of such electrochemical reduction did not retain the microscale morphology of the starting silica reactants.

Sol-gel synthesis on self-replicating single-cell scaffolds: applying complex chemistries to nature's 3-D nanostructured templates.

A sol-gel process was used, for the first time, to apply a multi-component, nanocrystalline, functional ceramic compound (BaTiO3) to a three-dimensional, self-replicating scaffold derived from a single-celled micro-organism (a diatom).