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Mesoporous silica monoliths are an attractive area of research owing to their high specific surface area, uniform channels and mesoporous size (2–30[Formula: see text]nm). This paper deals with the direct templating synthesis of a mesoporous worm-like silica monolithic material using F127 — a triblock copolymer, by micro-emulsion technique using trimethyl benzene (TMB), as the solvent. The synthesized silica monolith is characterized using SEM-EDAX, XRD, BET, NMR and FT-IR. The monolith shows an ordered worm-like mesoporous structure with tuneable through pores, an excellent host for the anchoring of chromo-ionophores for the naked-eye metal ion-sensing. The mesoporous monoliths were loaded with 4-dodecyl-6-(2-pyridylazo)-phenol (DPAP) ligand through direct immobilization, thereby acting as solid-state naked-eye colorimetric ion-sensors for the sensing toxic Pb[Formula: see text] ions at parts-per-billion (ppb) level in various industrial and environmental systems. The influence of various experimental parameters such as solution pH, limiting ligand loading concentration, amount of monolith material, matrix tolerance level, limit of detection and quantification has been studied and optimized.

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B2O3-CaO-PbO glasses with different concentrations of PbO (5-20 mol % in four steps) were prepared by melt quench technique. The amorphous nature and homogeneities of the prepared glasses were confirmed by XRD and SEM analyses. Ultrasonic velocities and density were measured at 303 K using pulse-echo technique and Archimedes’ principle respectively. Various parameters, viz., molar volume, longitudinal modulus, shear modulus, bulk modulus, Young’s modulus, Poisson’s ratio, micro-hardness and Debye temperature have been evaluated from the measured data. The results of ultrasonic properties indicate that the incorporation of lead ions expand the calcium borate network structure. FTIR spectra revealed that boron exists in both trigonal and tetrahedral structural units and no boroxial ring formation takes place in the glass structure. The transition temperature, melting temperature and crystallization temperature have been identified using DTA measurements.

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