Tailor-made macroporous vanadium oxide foams

Upon a nonstatic patterning method that employs a metastable air-liquid foaming process, macroporous vanadium oxide scaffolds have been synthesized. By controlling the foams liquid fraction, the process in use allows one to tune the size and shape (from spherical to a more polygonal aspect) as well as the Plateau-borders thickness of the vanadium oxide macroscopic void spaces. XRD experiments reveal the amorphous character of the vanadium oxide matrices intercalated with surfactant entities, while the local structure around vanadium atoms, as demonstrated with V-51 NMR MAS experiments, is close to that obtained for V2O5 xerogel.