Synthesis And Biomolecular Adsorption Of Mesoporous Silica Materials

Due to the uniform pore structure and high surface areas, ordered mesoporous materials (e.g., MCM-41, SBA-15 etc.) have been studied extensively in the fields of catalysis, separation, adsorption, etc. Methods to tune the morphology, pore size and particle size of the mesoporous materials, as well as how to incorporate heterogeneous atoms (e.g., Al, Ti, etc.) into the framework have become a hot issue for the purpose of their practical applications. Particularly, mesoporous materials with short & open channels have been extensively investigated because they are more favorable to the mass transfer.Current work mainly focused on the construction and application of functional mesoporous materials, especially in the bio-related fields. The details are as follows: (1) Tailoring pore size of MCM-41 was investigated by using different alkali source, and organic amines were found to be more effective in expanding pore size than inorganic ammonia. At the same time, by using different approaches, aluminum containing MCM-41 mesoporous materials were obtained, and their structure transformations during the high-temperature hydrothermal treatment were also studied. (2) Alkanes with different chain length (C₆-C₁₂) have been used as cosolvents to tune the morphology, structure, pore length of highly ordered SBA-15. As a result, short-pore mesoporous materials with diverse morphologies, such as columns, bunches, films, hierarchical hollow spheres, etc. have been constructed successfully. (3) An improved"pH-adjusting"method wasfound to be effective in the incorporation of aluminum into the frameworks of mesoporous silicas. 27Al MAS NMR and 27Al MQ MAS NMR have been used to monitor the evolution of aluminum microenviroments during the whole incorporation process. Short-pore SBA-15 with highly symmtric tetrahedral-coordinate aluminum has been constructed. (4) Adsorption behavior of different proteins (Lysozyme, BSA, trypsin, etc.) has been investigated over the functional materials with different pore sizes, morphologies and structures, many interesting results have been observed.