Bio-Inspired Nanocomposites: From Synthesis Toward Potential Applications
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Bio-Inspired Nanocomposites: From Synthesis Toward Potential Applications Tewodros Asefa, Neil Coombs, Hiltrud Grondey, Mietek Jaroniec1, Michal Kruk1, Mark J. MacLachlan, and Geoffrey A. Ozin* Materials Chemistry Research Group, Department of Chemistry, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3H6, Canada 1 Department of Chemistry, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, 44242, USA
ABSTRACT In recent years, the extraordinary properties of bio-inspired nanocomposites have stimulated great interest in the development of bottom-up synthetic approaches to organicinorganic hybrid materials in which molecular scale control is exerted over the interface between the organic and inorganic moieties. These developments have led to advanced materials with novel properties and potential use in catalysis, sensing, separations and environmental remediation. Periodic mesoporous organosilica (PMO) materials are an entirely new class of nanocomposites with molecularly integrated organic/inorganic networks, high surface areas and pore volumes, and well ordered and uniform size pores and channels. We recently have extended the approach to include novel PMO materials incorporating chiral and heteroatom-containing organic functional groups inside the inorganic framework that may be useful in asymmetric catalysis, enantiomeric separations and heavy metal remediation. INTRODUCTION Over evolutionary time scales, Nature has mastered the process of making several complex and hierarchal structures that can perform various tasks in living organisms [1]. Most of these form through biomineralization of inorganic compounds within membrane-delineated space and/or organic matrix and scaffolding composed of specialized macromolecules [2]. Examples of such structures include calcium phosphates in bones and teeth of vertebrates, calcium carbonates of mollusk shells and statoliths of squids, biogeomagnetic compass of magnetotactic bacteria, and exoskeleton of coccolith [2,3]. Control over the crystal nucleation, polymorph type, crystal texture and morphology in all these materials are the result of the buildup of the hierarchal structures starting at the molecular level to form composite organic-inorganic biomaterials [2]. Understanding of the mechanism of biomineralization and mimicking this process from the natural world has been an enjoyable and rewarding area of research in materials science, biomimetics, bioinorganic chemistry, biomedical science, bioelectronics and bioinspired self-assembly in the last few decades [3-7]. This inspiration, for instance, has led selfassembly material chemists to use surfactant-templating self-assembly approaches to discover ordered mesostructured silicas (M41S materials) in 1992 [8]. These materials have periodic organic-inorganic hierarchical structures and their synthesis mimics nature’s extraordinary ability in a number of ways. In 1999, similar approaches led us and two other groups to discover new types of surfactant-templated periodic mesoporous organosilica (PMO) materials that have selfassembled structures w
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