Making waves: Pioneering a nanoconfinement platform with mesoporous silica for sustainable water management and environmental applications.

Nanomaterials applied in industrial processes and environmental fields usually demand immobilization and recovery strategies that often result in functionality loss and added operational costs. Nanoconfinement, the spatial restriction of nano-sized particles within a larger porous substrate, not only can address critical challenges and sustainability concerns in environmental nanotechnology but also offers unique opportunities otherwise inaccessible by unconfined, bulk-phase nanomaterials. In this perspective, we propose mesoporous silica (mSiO) as an innovative framework for spatially confining metal nanoparticles in a well-controlled manner, offering an effective nanoconfinement engineering strategy for sustainable water management and environmental applications.

Nanoencapsulated Phase-Change Materials: Versatile and Air-Tolerant Platforms for Triplet-Triplet Annihilation Upconversion.

Efficient and long-term stable triplet-triplet annihilation upconversion (TTA-UC) can be achieved by effectively protecting the excited organic triplet ensembles from photoinduced oxygen quenching, and discovery of a new material platform that promotes TTA-UC in ambient conditions is of paramount importance for practical applications. In this study, we present the first demonstration of an organic nonparaffin phase-change material (PCM) as an air-tolerant medium for TTA-UC with a unique solid-liquid phase transition in response to temperature variation. For the proposed concept, 2,4-hexadien-1-ol is used and extensively characterized with several key features, including good solvation capacity, mild melting point (30.

Yolk-Shell-Type Gold Nanoaggregates for Chemo- and Photothermal Combination Therapy for Drug-Resistant Cancers.

Epithelial ovarian cancer is a gynecological cancer with the highest mortality rate, and it exhibits resistance to conventional drugs. Gold nanospheres have gained increasing attention over the years as photothermal therapeutic nanoparticles, owing to their excellent biocompatibility, chemical stability, and ease of synthesis; however, their practical application has been hampered by their low colloidal stability and photothermal effects. In the present study, we developed a yolk-shell-structured silica nanocapsule encapsulating aggregated gold nanospheres (aAuYSs) and examined the photothermal effects of aAuYSs on cell death in drug-resistant ovarian cancers both and .

Versatile Yolk-Shell Encapsulation: Catalytic, Photothermal, and Sensing Demonstration.

Here, a novel, versatile synthetic strategy to fabricate a yolk-shell structured material that can encapsulate virtually any functional noble metal or metal oxide nanocatalysts of any morphology in a free suspension fashion is reported. This strategy also enables encapsulation of more than one type of nanoparticle inside a single shell, including paramagnetic iron oxide used for magnetic separation. The mesoporous organosilica shell provides efficient mass transfer of small target molecules, while serving as a size exclusion barrier for larger interfering molecules.

Upconverting Oil-Laden Hollow Mesoporous Silica Microcapsules for Anti-Stokes-Based Biophotonic Applications.

A recyclable, aqueous phase functioning and biocompatible photon upconverting system is developed. Hollow mesoporous silica microcapsules (HMSMs) with ordered radial mesochannels were employed, for the first time, as vehicles for the post-encapsulation of oil phase triplet-triplet annihilation upconversion (TTA-UC), with the capability of homogeneous suspension in water. In-depth characterization of such upconverting oil-laden HMSMs (UC-HMSMs) showed that the mesoporous silica shells reversibly stabilized the encapsulated UC oil in water to allow efficient upconverted emission, even under aerated conditions.

Flexible and Micropatternable Triplet-Triplet Annihilation Upconversion Thin Films for Photonic Device Integration and Anticounterfeiting Applications.

Triplet-triplet annihilation upconversion (TTA-UC) has recently drawn widespread interest for its capacity to harvest low-energy photons and to broaden the absorption spectra of photonic devices, such as solar cells. Although conceptually promising, effective integration of TTA-UC materials into practical devices has been difficult due to the diffusive and anoxic conditions required in TTA-UC host media. Of the solid-state host materials investigated, rubbery polymers facilitate the highest TTA-UC efficiency.