Abstract Silica-based optical fibres are a workhorse of nonlinear optics, providing ready access to range phenomena including solitons and self-phase modulation. However, they have one fundamental limitation: due the amorphous nature silica, do not exhibit second-order nonlinearity, except for negligible contributions from surfaces. Here we demonstrate second-harmonic generation in functionaliz...

Free-radical polymerization inside mesoporous silica has been investigated in order to open a route to functional polymer-silica composite materials with well-defined mesoporosity. Various vinyl monomers, such as styrene, chloromethyl styrene, 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate, and methacrylic acid, were polymerized after impregnation into mesoporous silicas with various structures, which were synthe...

Batch Adsorption of Acid Red 37 (AR37) and Basic Orange 2 (BO2) on amino ethyl-functionalized SBA-15 have been studied. SBA-15 was synthesized and functionalized according to the procedure in the literature. Amino ethyl-functionalized SBA-15 showed the BET surface area 520 m2/g and pore diameter 7.02 nm, based on adsorption-desorption of N2. SEM image shows lengthy fib...

In this article, mercapto-functionalized helical mesoporous silica nanorods have been synthesized by a one-step co-condensation of tetraethoxysilane (TEOS) and 3-mercaptopropyltrimethoxysilane (MPTS) using cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) as a template. Process parameters, including MPTS concentration, stirring time and added volume of ethanol as co-solvent, were both carefully and accurat...

This work describes a novel and scalable colloid chemistry strategy to fabricate gold semishells based on the selective growth of gold on Janus silica particles (500 nm in diameter) partly functionalized with amino groups. The modulation of the geometry of the Janus silica particles allows us to tune the final morphology of the gold semishells. This method also provides a route to fabricating h...

Host-Guest chemistry based on mesoporous silica materials has attracted increasing attention in the past two decades. Potential applications for these functionalized materials are in the fields of controlled drug delivery, catalysis, separation or encapsulation of functional biomolecules. The present work is focused on the synthesis of nanosized, mesoporous drug delivery devices, which are able...

The synthesis of bifunctional mesoporous silica nanoparticles is described. Two chemically orthogonal functionalities are incorporated into mesoporous silica by co-condensation of tetraethoxysilane with two orthogonally functionalized triethoxyalkylsilanes. Post-functionalization is achieved by orthogonal surface chemistry. A thiol-ene reaction, Cu-catalyzed 1,3-dipolar alkyne/azide cycloadditi...

In this work, mixed-mode silica particles functionalized with octyl and sulfonic acid groups was conveniently prepared by co-bonding a mixture of n-octyltriethoxysilane and 3-mercaptopropyltriethoxysilane and then oxidized with hydrogen peroxide. Candida rugosa lipase (CRL) was immobilized on the mixed-mode silica particles via hydrophobic and strong cation-exchange interaction. The resulting i...

The synthesis of highly functionalized porous silica-carbon composites made up of sulphonic groups attached to a carbon layer coating the pores of three types of mesostructured silica (i.e. SBA-15, KIT-6 and mesocellular silica) is presented. The synthesis procedure involves the following steps: a) removal of the surfactant, b) impregnation of the silica pores with a carbon precursor, c) carbon...