Nature Chem. doi:10.1038/nchem.166 (2009)

The most complicated porous nanomaterial ever made is reported by Jackie Ying at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology in Singapore, Xiaodong Zou at Stockholm University and their colleagues.

Made from silica, the material has three separate but interwoven continuous porous channels (pictured). Until now, scientists have only managed to construct mesoporous silica materials containing at most two independent pore systems.

The authors generated the intertwined porous material using a specially designed template made from a positively charged surfactant. The structure contains both ultrashort and ultralong silica channels, and could be used as a molecular sieve to separate different molecules at different rates.