RECEIVED DATE (to be automatically inserted after your manuscript is accepted if requiredaccording to the journal that you are submitting your paper to) 2 ABSTRACT Herein, we report the synthesis, microstructure, and magnetic properties of nanocrystalline cadmium ferrite (CdFe 2 O 4 ) thin films with both an ordered cubic structure of 18 nm diameter pores and singlephase spinel grains averaging 13 nm in diameter. These mesoporous materials were produced through facile polymer templating of hydrated nitrate salt precursors. Both the morphology and microstructure, including cation site occupancy and electronic bonding configuration, were analyzed in detail by electron microscopy, grazing incidence small-angle X-ray scattering, Raman and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and N 2 -physisorption. The data obtained demonstrate that the network of pores is retained up to annealing temperatures as high as 650 °C -the onset of crystallization is at ϑ = (590 ± 10) °C. Furthermore, they show that the polymer-templated samples exhibit a "partially" inverted spinel structure with inversion parameter = 0.40 ± 0.02, which is different from microcrystalline CdFe 2 O 4