The Stöber process is a sol-gel approach to preparing monodisperse (uniform) spherical silica () materials that was developed by a team led by Werner Stöber and reported in 1968. The process, an evolution and extension of research described in Gerhard Kolbe's 1956 Ph.D. dissertation, was an innovative discovery that still has wide applications more than 50 years later. Silica precursor tetraethyl orthosilicate (, TEOS) is hydrolyzed in alcohol (typically methanol or ethanol) in the presence of ammonia as a catalyst:
