Metal Species–Encapsulated Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticles: Current Advancements and Latest Breakthroughs

Abstract

Despite their advantageous morphological attributes and attractive physicochemical properties, mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) are merely supported as carriers or vectors for a reason. Incorporating various metal species in the confined nanospaces of MSNs (M-MSNs) significantly enriches their mesoporous architecture and diverse functionalities, bringing exciting potentials to this burgeoning field of research. These incorporated guest species offer enormous benefits to the MSN hosts concerning the reduction of their eventual size and the enhancement of their performance and stability, among other benefits. Substantially, the guest species act through contributing to reduced aggregation, augmented durability, ease of long-term storage, and reduced toxicity, attributes that are of particular interest in diverse fields of biomedicine. In this review, the first aim is to discuss the current advancements and latest breakthroughs in the fabrication of M-MSNs, emphasizing the pros and cons, the confinement of various metal species in the nanospaces of MSNs, and various factors influencing the encapsulation of metal species in MSNs. Further, an emphasis on potential applications of M-MSNs in various fields, including in adsorption, catalysis, photoluminescence, and biomedicine, among others, along with a set of examples is provided. Finally, the advances in M-MSNs with perspectives are summarized.(2-5 nm), tunable sizes (50-150 nm), shapes (hexagonal, wormhole-like, cubic, and lamellar) and morphologies (spheres, helical fibers, tubules, gyroids, crystals, and numerous other hierarchical complex architectures), ease of surface functionalization (both interior as well as exterior), unique topology, colloidal and thermal stabilities, and high dispersity. [4] The exceptional topology of surfactant-templated MSNs makes them unique with desirable properties that can be obtained by controlling the preparation conditions, such as the reaction temperature, pH value, stirring speed, and type of silica source, as well as surfactant, among others. [4j,m,n,5] These advantages make the MSNs as versatile materials and ideal choice for catalysis, [6] adsorption, [7] optical devices, [4j] polymeric fillers, [8] and diverse biomedical applications including bio-imaging, [4r,t,u,9] biocatalysts, [10] biosensing, [11] tissue engineering, [4f ] and drug/ gene delivery accounting for targeted and controlled release systems. [3d,4i,o-t,v,12] With these significant advantages and attractive physicochemical properties, it is highly anticipated to harness the desirable and beneficial properties of MSNs through the incorporation of various metals and their respective conjugates for exploration in innovative applications with exceptional performance. [13] The encapsulated metal species in the confined nanospaces of MSNs (M-MSNs) not only significantly enrich the mesoporous architecture and functionalities of MSN, but also tend to overcome their intrinsic limitations, such as their poor suspension ability and stability, lack of intrig...

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