Cocoon-shaped hollow mesoporous silica ellipsoids controlled by interfacial destabilization growth kinetics

Abstract

Rational design of hollow mesoporous silicas with distinctive morphology has attracted considerable interest for their promising applications of different functions. Herein, we reported hollow mesoporous silica ellipsoids with quasiperiodic cocoon-shape, and fully investigated the evolution of external morphology and interior structure with solution concentrations. However, synthetic theories used so far hardly provide reasonable explanation. Therefore, a morphogenetic mechanism upon interfacial destabilization dynamics is proposed based on the experimental results, in which unstable interfaces of emulsions influenced by harmonic perturbations are employed as secondary templates for the nonequilibrium deposition/diffusion of rod-like micelles, explaining well the controllability of the morphology.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

IMPACT STATEMENT

Taro-like hollow mesoporous silicas were produced via a secondary-templating strategy. A nonequilibrium growth based on interfacial destabilization dynamics is proposed for further design of mesoporous silicas with other distinctive patterns.

KEYWORDS:

• Hollow mesoporous silicas
• quasiperiodic shell
• interfacial stability
• secondary-templating strategy
• morphogenetic mechanism

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the guidance of Professor Hui Wu, Ph.D. from State Key Lab of New Ceramics and Fine Processing, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Key Research & Development Program of China: [Grant Number 2016YFC0304502].