Mesoporous silica
Nano-scale porous silica compound / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Mesoporous silica is a form of silica that is characterised by its mesoporous structure, that is, having pores that range from 2 nm to 50 nm in diameter. According to IUPAC's terminology, mesoporosity sits between microporous (<2 nm) and macroporous (>50 nm). Mesoporous silica is a relatively recent development in nanotechnology. The most common types of mesoporous nanoparticles are MCM-41 and SBA-15.[2] Research continues on the particles, which have applications in catalysis, drug delivery and imaging.[3] Mesoporous ordered silica films have been also obtained with different pore topologies.[4]
A compound producing mesoporous silica was patented around 1970.[5][6][7] It went almost unnoticed[8] and was reproduced in 1997.[9] Mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) were independently synthesized in 1990 by researchers in Japan.[10] They were later produced also at Mobil Corporation laboratories[11] and named Mobil Composition of Matter (or Mobil Crystalline Materials, MCM).[12]
Six years later, silica nanoparticles with much larger (4.6 to 30 nanometer) pores were produced at the University of California, Santa Barbara.[13] The material was named Santa Barbara Amorphous type material, or SBA-15. These particles also have a hexagonal array of pores.
The researchers who invented these types of particles planned to use them as molecular sieves. Today, mesoporous silica nanoparticles have many applications in medicine, biosensors,[14] thermal energy storage,[15] water/gas filtration [16] and imaging.