A facile and controllable one-pot synthesis approach to amino-functionalized hollow silica nanoparticles with accessible ordered mesoporous shells

Abstract

The development of a practical synthetic method to functionalize hollow mesoporous silica with organic groups is of current interest for selective adsorption and energy storage applications. Herein, a facile and controllable one-pot approach for the synthesis of monodisperse amino-functionalized hollow mesoporous silica nanoparticles is presented. A novel solid-to-hollow structural transformation procedure of the silica nanoparticles is presented. The structural transformation is easily designed, as observed through transmission electron microscopy, by tailoring the HCl and N-lauroylsarcosine sodium molar ratio and the water content in the sol-gel. Ordered and radially oriented in situ amino-functionalized mesochannels were successfully introduced into the shells of the hollow silica nanoparticles. A formation mechanism for the hollow mesoporous silica materials is discussed.