By using mesoporous silica thin films with different porestructure as templates, employing an electrodeposition method, Cu an ZnO nanostructures were synthesized and characterized respectively. By using hexagonal mesostructured template, metal Cu nanowires with diameter of 7 nm were derived and by using body-centered mesostructured template, Cu nanoparticles with dumbbell-like morphology were obtained. As for the ZnO nanostructures, channels of the silica templates were fully occupied with the semiconductor, and ZnO/SiO₂ nanocomposites with different mesostructure were prepared. This approach can be further expended to nanostructures with alternative components, which provided a new method for synthesizing small-sized nanostructures by electrodeposition.

Key words: electrodeposition, nanostructure, mesoporous material, template, film