Surfactant-free synthesis of hollow mesoporous organosilica nanoparticles with controllable particle sizes and diversified organic moieties

Abstract

Fine control over particle sizes and organic moieties of hollow organosilica nanoparticles is of importance towards practical applications of functional colloids in, for example, catalysis, drug delivery, and coating. Here, we report the versatile synthesis of hollow mesoporous organosilica nanoparticles with controllable particle sizes and diversified organic moieties using silica nanoparticles (SNs) as sacrificial, hard templates, which are removed by dissolution under alkali conditions. The resulting organosilica nanoparticles possessed size-tunable hollow interiors that can be accessed through mesoporous shells. The diameters of such hollow organosilica nanoparticles were easily controlled by altering the diameters of the SN templates, ranging from 12 to 170 nm. Organic moieties in the mesoporous shells can be diversified by changing the organosilica sources, (EtO)₃Si–R–Si(OEt)₃, where R = methylene, ethylene, and phenylene groups. In addition, it was revealed that there are minimum surface areas of the SN templates in the dispersions required to achieve the monodisperse silica/organosilica core/shell nanoparticles without homogeneous nucleation of organosilica nanoparticles. The nitrogen and argon adsorption–desorption isotherms of the resulting hollow organosilica nanoparticles showed type H5 hysteresis loops, which are derived from the mixed pore system of cage-like pores (hollow spaces) and open pores (interparticular voids between hollow organosilica nanoparticles). Hysteresis scanning measurements and NLDFT pore size distributions revealed the pore structures of the resulting hollow organosilica nanoparticles.