The current role of mesostructures in composite materials and device fabrication

This short review is intended to direct the reader to selected current literature where mesostructured (typically surfactant templated) materials have been characterized in terms of their potential applications. Only limited experimental data will be presented. However, one of the primary criteria in the literature selection for this review was that the research be closely related to an application, and ideally have some "figure of merit" results which could be directly correlated with current state of the art commercial performance. The use of mesostructured catalysts, while industrially Very important, will not be covered since it is presented elsewhere in this volume. (C) 2001 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.