Silica gels offer excellent wear resistance, high chemical stability, good insulation, and light transmittance, are therefore promising to engineer 2D sensing films. However, their practical applications are greatly hampered by their poor structural stability, low sensitivity, reliability, and repeatability. Incorporation of nanoelements into glasses and ceramics is a promising new pathway to tackle these challenges. Unfortunately, it is difficult to disperse nanoparticles uniformly in any glass and ceramics. Herein, a facile sol–gel approach is applied to synthesize novel silica gel nanocomposites with dispersed nanoparticles (NPs) as additives and thymol blue as an indicator. Titanium dioxide (TiO2) NPs with a diameter of 5 nm can be dispersed uniformly in the silica gel, with enhanced modulus and hardness (up to 230% and 138%, respectively) and good alkaline resistance. The addition of nanoparticles improves the film's stability, sensitivity, and repeatability of spectral responses (in pH 1–12), and reduces the indicator leakage. The interaction of indicator with silica gel substrate, nanoparticles, and H+ is analyzed to elucidate the principle of reversible color change. This novel simplified method to produce glass‐like functional materials under much lower temperatures is groundbreaking in materials science and engineering.

Ag-Ag 2 S heterodimers with good dispersibility were prepared in polyethylene glycol 400 (PEG400) at 160°C. The possible formation mechanism was proposed along the "CH 3 COOAg/Ag 2 S-Ag 2 O/Ag 2 S-Ag/Ag 2 S" route. The products [a] Figure 4. (A) The XRD patterns of the products from the mixture of PEG400, AgNO 3 and S powder: (a) 100°C, 10 min, (b) 100°C, 30 min, (c) 120°C, 10 min. (B) The possible growing mode of Ag-Ag 2 S heterodimers.4052 uid was obtained. The postprocessing of the products were the same as that of the Ag-Ag 2 S heterodimers. Preparation of Ag 2 S Nanomaterials4 mmol sulfur powder were weighed into a 100 mL round flask while some 40 mL PEG400 and 1 mmol AgNO 3 were added. The mixture was kept at 100°C for 10 min under mild magnetic stirring and then the black turbid liquid was obtained. The postprocessing of the products were the same as that of the Ag-Ag 2 S heterodimers. Conflicts of InterestThere are no conflicts to declare.

With the aid of cotton template and precursor solution of mesoporous silica, hierarchical mesoporous SiO 2 tubes with size-adjustable mesoporous in the tube-wall were synthesized through sol-gel method. The products are tubular silica that inherit the hierarchical structure of initial cotton and contain mesopores in their wall. The size of mesoporous in the wall can be adjusted by change the mixture ratio of mesoporous silica precursor solution. Noble metal particles, silver and gold, were introduced into the surface of mesoporous silica tubes respectively to obtain a uniform distribution of noble metal nanoparticles on the tube-wall. This method can be applied to many nature substance templates with different structures to prepare various structural SiO 2 materials.