Apoferritin single crystals are used as a template to prepare oriented and ordered mesoporous silica structures. Condensation of pre-hydrolyzed precursors takes place within the crystal voids, transferring hierarchical structure silica. A porous framework is created after protein removal by calcination, which provides high control over spatial orientation size individual pores.

We demonstrate a rapid method for enzyme immobilization directly on a waveguide surface by encapsulation in a silica matrix. Organophosphate hydrolase (OPH), an enzyme that catalytically hydrolyzes organophosphates, was used as a model enzyme to demonstrate the utility of lysozyme-mediated silica formation for enzyme stabilization. Silica morphology and the efficiency of OPH encapsulation were ...

We demonstrate a rapid method for enzyme immobilization directly on a waveguide surface by encapsulation in a silica matrix. Organophosphate hydrolase (OPH), an enzyme that catalytically hydrolyzes organophosphates, was used as a model enzyme to demonstrate the utility of lysozyme-mediated silica formation for enzyme stabilization. Silica morphology and the efficiency of OPH encapsulation were ...

We have created ellipsoidal or spherical morphologies of silica particles in a template-free scheme that involves controlling surface tension forces through selected volume ratios of a water/oil micellar system.

The aggregation behavior of a novel histidine derivative surfactant N-dodecanoyl-L-histidine (DHis) in aqueous solution was investigated. By mixing with cationic/anionic surfactant, an interesting phase transition over time from transparent homogeneous solution to jelly and finally to fibrous floccules was observed with aggregates growth taken place in the systems. Making use of the growing fib...

Inverse opals made by polymerizing vinyl monomers inside a colloidal crystal have lattice dimensions that are contracted relative to the original hard template. This effect was studied in order to investigate the possibility of making double replicas of varying pore sizes from different materials, and to gain a better understanding of the polymer contraction behavior during replication. The deg...

Hierarchically porous silica samples, ranging from mesopores to macropores, were prepared by “nanoscale casting using supercritical (SC) fluids” (NCSCF) technology and bionics, achieving a biomineralization process in an environmentally friendly and efficient way. These wood-templated SiO2 samples, having special hierarchical pore sizes from 3.3 nm up to 50 μm, were obtained with SC-CO2 precurs...

In this study, we demonstrate a novel fabrication method to prepare metallic Janus silica particles by embedding nanosized silica particles on a spherical polystyrene (PS) substrate in supercritical carbon dioxide (sc CO2), followed by labelling with gold nanoparticles on the exposed part of the silica colloids. To this end, three main types of Janus particles displaying two distinct surfaces a...

We present a re-usable enzyme catalyst system via direct encapsulation of cellobiase in nonsurfactant templated sol–gel mesoporous silica host material with D-fructose as the template. The pore diameter and porosity of the silica host material, controlled by the fructose content, controlled the diffusion of substrate to the enzyme. This in situ immobilized cellobiase showed little or no leakage...