Mesoporous silica powders have gained wide popularity for such uses as molecular separations and catalysis. In addition, breaking the lithographic lower limit is essential in the continued miniaturization of electronic, optic and magnetic devices. As such, an increasing amount of interest has been focused toward the application of mesoporous silicas as patterning templates for device fabrication. Vertically oriented, ordered mesoporous silica (OMS), could not only be the key to bridging the gap between zero dimensional devices and lithographic limits but also provide a low cost device fabrication route. Here we investigate a new method to obtain hierarchical vertically oriented porous structures via inclusion of OMS into the pores of anodic aluminum oxide (AAO). Initial HRTEM and XRD studies suggest that this deposition method gives rise to hierarchical structures with a uni-axial porous formation. Pore orientation, AAO pore filling, and OMS pore size parameters will further be validated from gas desorption, HRTEM, HRSEM, AFM, XRD, and SANS studies. In addition, inclusion of nanowires into these pores was conducted via a supercritical fluid inclusion technique. The ability to synthesize ordered arrays of semiconducting nanowires is a key step in future ‘bottom-up' fabrication of multi-layered device architectures for potential nanoelectronic and optoelectronic devices.

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