Silica is a very interesting system that has been thoroughly studied in the last decades. One of the most outstanding characteristics of silica suspensions is their stability in solutions at high salt concentrations. In addition to that, measurements of direct-interaction forces between silica surfaces, obtained by different authors by means of surface force apparatus or atomic force microscope...

A novel scheme for using modified colloidal crystals as templates for silica polymerization is reported. 3D close-packed crystals of submicrometer latex spheres are assembled on a membrane surface by filtration. To induce silica polymerization, the particles are modified by adsorption of the surfactant hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide. The colloidal crystals are then infused with a silica sol...

The core-shell structured mesoporous silica nanomaterials (MSNs) are experiencing rapid development in many applications such as heterogeneous catalysis, bio-imaging and drug delivery wherein a large pore volume is desirable. We develop a one-pot method for large-scale synthesis of brain-like mesoporous silica nanocomposites based on the reasonable change of the intrinsic nature of the -Si-O-Si...

Diatoms are eukaryotic microalgae that produce species-specifically structured cell walls made of SiO(2) (silica). Formation of the intricate silica structures of diatoms is regarded as a paradigm for biomolecule-controlled self-assembly of three-dimensional, nano- to microscale-patterned inorganic materials. Silica formation involves long-chain polyamines and phosphoproteins (silaffins and sil...

Hierarchically structured membranes composed of mesoporous silica embedded inside the channels of anodic alumina (MS-AAM) were synthesized using the aspiration method. Ethanol is shown to have a significant effect on the type and organization of the mesoporous silica phase. Detailed textural analysis revealed that the pore size distribution of the mesoporous silica narrows and the degree of ord...

Biomimetic formation of silica from polyamines such as poly(ethylene imine) (PEI), inspired by the proteins found in diatoms and sponges, has been actively investigated recently as a potential route to silica formation compared to the conventional sol–gel process. We report silica formation onto nanofibers of PEI blended with poly(vinyl pyrrolidone) (PVP) obtained via electrospinning of their 5...

Poly(N-cyanoethylethyleneimine) (PCEI) obtained by Michael addition of linear poly(ethyleneimine) (LPEI) with acrylonitrile provided novel nanocrystalline entities which could serve as catalytic templates affording nanosheet-based structured silica under mild conditions.