The two twirl around each other to create a dense scaffold, but never touch. In a paper that appeared in the November 26 issue of Science, MIT researcher Vanessa Chan studied two materials that self-assemble into the twisting shape called the double gyroid.
Nanoporous structures have tiny holes.
Nanorelief structures are like miniature jungle gyms. Their interconnected struts form a three-dimensional structure that is mostly air. In this case, the struts are only 300 Angstroms in diameter, or about one-thousandth the width of a human hair. It also is potentially solvent-resistant, which expands its applications. Creating new inorganic materials with ordered pores or struts is an area of increasing interest to industry, she said, because of the materials' potential applications as selective membranes, next-generation catalysts and photonic materials.