Coordination Enhanced Synthesis for Hollow Mesoporous Silica Nanoreactors

Recent progress has put the spotlight on functional nanoparticles encapsulated inside hollow silica nanospheres, as so-called catalytic nanoreactors for various reactions. However, the synthetic methods used so far vary from one nanoparticle system to another, not providing access to synthesis of a large variety of such materials. Here we report an alternative, namely a coordination enhanced synthesis leading to a single system which can directly produce a vast number of different hollow mesoporous silica nanoreactors with metal or metal oxide nanoparticles inside their cavities (M@HMSNs or MxOy@HMSNs, where M stands for the chosen metal). We have successfully used the method with more than 21 different metals (Ru, Pd, Pt, Au, Sc, V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, Zr, Mo, In, Sn, Ba, La, Ce and Eu). Specifically, a triple ligand is used to coordinate the various metal ions to form a negatively charged complex 3-D network, which further combines by electrostatic attraction with a positively charged/neutral di...