Diverse
microstructures and morphologies from plant cells inspire
us with great opportunities for creating novel nanomaterials. In this
work, a biomorphic mesoporous SiO2 with unique two-dimensional
(2D) nanostructure was feasibly fabricated by employing renewable
petal cells as bioscaffolds. During the structure formation, the hydrolyzed
siliceous species initially adhere to and then penetrated the cell
walls, forming the composite of siliceous species/cells. This is followed
by shrinkage and deformation of the cell skeleton in a subsequent
drying process. Then, the special 2D SiO2 with abundant
internal mesopores was acquired after careful removal of the cells.
The concentration of siliceous source (tetraethyl orthosilicate, TEOS)
in the impregnation/infiltration steps is a key factor for the replication
of the biological morphology for SiO2. The sample prepared
with C
TEOS of 0.05 mol L–1 can duplicate well the biomorphology of petal cells, which has a
BET surface area of 177 m2 g–1 and pore
size ranging from 4 to 9 nm. Because of its highly accessible pores
and large attachable adsorption sites, the biomimetic 2D porous SiO2 displays significant adsorption capacity for methylene blue
(74 mg g–1), which is higher than those by nonporous
SiO2 (14 mg g–1) and the traditionally
hydrothermally synthesized mesoporous SBA-15 (45 mg g–1).
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