Dendritic Fibrous Nanosilica for Catalysis, Energy Harvesting, Carbon Dioxide Mitigation, Drug Delivery, and Sensing

Abstract

Morphology‐controlled nanomaterials such as silica play a crucial role in the development of technologies for addressing challenges in the fields of energy, environment, and health. After the discovery of Stöber silica, followed by that of mesoporous silica materials, such as MCM‐41 and SBA‐15, a significant surge in the design and synthesis of nanosilica with various sizes, shapes, morphologies, and textural properties has been observed in recent years. One notable invention is dendritic fibrous nanosilica, also known as KCC‐1. This material possesses a unique fibrous morphology, unlike the tubular porous structure of various conventional silica materials. It has a high surface area with improved accessibility to the internal surface, tunable pore size and pore volume, controllable particle size, and, importantly, improved stability. Since its discovery, a large number of studies have been reported concerning its use in applications such as catalysis, solar‐energy harvesting, energy storage, self‐cleaning antireflective coatings, surface plasmon resonance‐based ultrasensitive sensors, CO2 capture, and biomedical applications. These reports indicate that dendritic fibrous nanosilica has excellent potential as an alternative to popular silica materials such as MCM‐41, SBA‐15, Stöber silica, and mesoporous silica nanoparticles. This Review provides a critical survey of the dendritic fibrous nanosilica family of materials, and the discussion includes the synthesis and formation mechanism, applications in catalysis and photocatalysis, applications in energy harvesting and storage, applications in magnetic and composite materials, applications in CO2 mitigation, biomedical applications, and analytical applications.

A Novel and Versatile Grafting Procedure: Toward the Highest Possible Sulfonation Degree of Mesoporous Silica

“…[26,42] Comparing the KIT-6-SH with the KIT-6-SO 3 H DRIFT spectrum, the shift of the bands at 2941 and 2842 cm −1 to higher wavenumbers and the absence of the thiol assigning band at 2561 cm −1 indicates the successful, quantitative oxidation of the thiol to sulfonic acid groups. Additionally, signals deriving from Q 3 and Q 4 Figure S7, Supporting Information) the organic functionalization of SBA-15-SO 3 H due to arising signals of propyl sulfonic acid groups. The quantitative solid-state MAS 29 Si-NMR spectrum of SBA-15-SO 3 H clearly shows the presence of a T 3 branch at −67 ppm, [20,21,23,30] and proves covalent anchorage of propyl sulfonic acid chains onto the silica surface.…”

“…Efforts to handle the rising energy demand in a sustainable way are, for example, focused on the optimization of fuel cells in general [1] or the esterification resp. [4] In case of the proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC), membranes containing sulfonic acid-modified materials are used due to their good proton conduction. [2,3] Both processes have in common that acid-, very often sulfonic acid, containing solids are used.…”

Synthesis of High Surface Area Carbon Nanospheres with Wrinkled Cages and Their CO2 Capture Studies

“…The hard template approach although has one serious disadvantage, i. e. their poor availability with different sizes, and morphologies. DFNS is high surface area dendritic fibrous nano‐silica, in which the surface area originates from its fibrous morphology, increasing accessibility as compared to mesoporous silica like MCM‐41 and SBA‐15 and others have shown the successful utilization of the DFNS in several fields, including catalysis, gas capture, solar‐energy harvesting, energy storage, sensors, and biomedical applications.…”

“…DFNS is high surface area dendritic fibrous nano-silica, in which the surface area originates from its fibrous morphology, increasing accessibility as compared to mesoporous silica like MCM-41 and SBA-15. [32][33][34][35][36][37] We [32][33][34][35][36] and others [37] have shown the successful utilization of the DFNS in several fields, including catalysis, gas capture, solar-energy harvesting, energy storage, sensors, and biomedical applications.In this work, we report the synthesis of high surface area carbon nanospheres with wrinkled morphology, like dendritic fibrous nanosilica (DFNS). [32] We hypothesised that DFNS due to their easy synthesis and tunable properties (size, surface area, fiber density etc) fulfils the requirement of hard template and can be used in the development of carbon nanospheres with dendritic or wrinkled morphology.…”

Synthesis of tetramethylquinoline‐2,4‐diamine using FeNi3/KCC‐1/APTPOSS‐supported copper cyclam and salen complex as a reusable catalyst

“…[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] FeNi 3 core-shell nanoparticles have been used as a suitable catalyst in many reactions including the synthesis of 1,3-thiazolidin-4-one, [11] triazolo[1,2-a]indazoletriones [12] and 4H-benzo [b]pyrans. Discovery of mesoporous silica materials such as MCM-41 and SBA-15 showed a notable increase in the range of design.…”