Structural Transcription of Organogels to Mesoporous Silicas: A Chain-length Dependent Morphology and Pore Texture

Abstract

Here, we report a chain-length dependent morphology and pore structure tailing of mesoporous silica templated from organogels, which is formed by primary alkylamine and ethylene glycol at room temperature. As the chain length of alkylamine changes from 12 to 18, the resulted materials exhibit a morphology change from layers to spheres and platelets, respectively. SEM and TEM observation revealed that these shapes appear to be inherited from their parent organogels. Further pore structure characterization by nitrogen sorption analysis demonstrates that all the resulted silicas exhibit typical IV isotherms indicative of uniform mesopores, and their pore sizes are dependent on the chain length of alkylamine used.

Heat‐Induced Supramolecular Organogels Composed of α‐Cyclodextrin and “Jellyfish‐Like” β‐Cyclodextrin–Poly(ε‐caprolactone)

“…13 The supramolecular organogel is an important branch of material science. 14 Supramolecular organogels with special properties such as high sensitivity to external environment, give rise to versatile applications in the area of targeted delivery, [15][16][17] molecular devices, [18][19][20] soft templates, [21][22][23] sen-sors, [24][25][26][27] catalysis, [28][29][30] and so on. However, a large number of organogels are formed by nonbiocompatible and nonbiodegradable gelators, which severely limited their application as functional materials, so it is necessary to make more effort to investigate gelators with better biocompatible and biodegradable properties.…”