MESOPOROUS THIN FILMS: SYNTHESIS, CHARACTERIZATION AND APPLICATIONS IN SENSING

STEINBERG, PAULA Y.; ZALDUENDO, M. MERCEDES; FUERTES, M. CECILIA; MORRONE, JOSEFINA; ANGELOMÉ, PAULA C.

Anales de la Asociación Química Argentina

Asociación Química Argentina

Lugar: Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires; Año: 2019 vol. 106 p. 115 - 131

2545-8655

Mesoporous oxide thin films (MOTFs) have received much attention in the last decades mainly because of their controlled array of pores with diameter in the 2-50 nm range and their versatility for development of technological devices. Nowadays, a diversity of pore templates as well as inorganic precursors are available, therefore a large variety of MOTFs can be obtained in terms of chemical composition (SiO2, TiO2, ZrO2, CeO2, Al2O3, HfO2, and mixed oxides) and pore sizes and arrangements. Among all the proposed applications of MOTFs, one of the most prominent is their use as constitutive part of sensors. The main advantages of using MOTFs in the construction of these devices are: high specific surface, chemical composition versatility and the easiness to deposit them onto a wide variety of substrates. In this minireview, we shortly describe the most common synthesis methods to obtain MOTFs along with the most usual techniques used to characterize their physicochemical properties. Afterwards, we discuss two of the lines that are being developed in our group to obtain specific and reproducible sensors based on MOTFs: Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS) sensors obtained by combining the films with metallic nanoparticles and optical sensors based on films multilayers.