Monodisperse mesoporous silica nanospheres with radially oriented mesochannels and their size effect on cell uptake

Abstract

A facile one-pot sol–gel approach was reported for the synthesis of monodisperse silica nanospheres (MSNs) with radially oriented mesochannels, tunable diameter ranging from 280 to 500nm, by using cetyl trimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) as structure-directing agent, different amount of tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) as the silica source and concentrated ammonia solution as the basic catalyst. Characterization and measurement using field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), low angle X-ray powder diffraction (LA-XRD) and nitrogen adsorption–desorption reveal that the obtained monodisperse MSNs have uniform, radially aligned mesopore of about 2.3nm, high surface area (about 960m2/g) and large pore volume of 0.58cm3/g. Cell experiments indicate that, they obtained MSNs possess excellent biocompatibility and the smaller MSNs have relatively lower cytotoxicity.