Hollow cubic silica shells and assembled porous coatings

A benign and facile process for forming monodisperse, hollow porous silica shells of a novel cubic morphology is identified. Templated on monodisperse crystalline germania cores that can be removed via aqueous dissolution, the hollow shells and their core–shell precursors are amenable to assembly into highly porous, gap-free near-monolayer films through manual and evaporative assembly techniques.