Facile One-Step Synthesis of Highly Ordered Bimodal Mesoporous Phosphosilicate Monoliths

摘要

Ordered mesoporous materials (OMMs) are of particular interest in many fields because of their favorable structural properties, and to meet some application requirements, their pore size must be controlled. The mesopore sizes can be tuned by many methods, but the methods could only enlarge the pore. Multiscale pores controlled independently with larger or smaller sizes and well-connected pores would be beneficial to some applications in, for example, catalysis. Recently, bimodal mesoporous materials (BMMs) with pore connectivity received much attention, because of their potentials in catalysis, separation, and proton conduction.rnCurrently BMMs are mostly silica or carbon powders, and their pores are well-connected, generally containing ordered mesopores connected by disordered pores at large mesoscales or microscales in the particle. Thus the BMM powders are very useful in heterogeneous catalysis and absorption, and the pore connectivity also makes them provide fast transfer pathways for guest molecules and protons through the particle. The pathways may be further shortened and would work faster if they are bridged by regular mesopores. On the other hand, the development of BMMs into macrodimensions would give them particular potential in, for example, electrochemical and optical devices. However, until now these kinds of bulk monolithic BMMs with well-connected regular pores have not been reported.