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Lead poisoning is an important problem because of its serious effects on human health. Yet a solution is not available due to an incomplete understanding of the state of lead ions in blood. Since most blood lead binds to hemoglobin (Hb) in red blood cells, identifying and capturing lead-contaminated Hb in RBCs is important. Herein, a magnetic blood lead remover with hyperbranched poly(amidoamine)s (HPAM) as template/co-adsorbent and core-shell mesoporous structure was synthesized. Lead-containing Hb was selectively captured and then fixed by mesoporous channels. The magnetic separation technology was used to separate the magnetic remover from blood. A related blood lead clean-up apparatus was used to remove lead from the blood of a pig in vivo. Results of physical/chemical characterizations, biocompatibility experiments, animal tests, and theoretical simulation verify the safety and efficiency of this removal strategy and the high efficiency of the blood lead clean-up apparatus.

Poor permeation of therapeutic agents and multidrug resistance (MDR) in solid tumors are the two major challenges that lead to the failure of the current chemotherapy methods. Herein, a zero‐waste doxorubicin‐loaded heparin/folic acid/l‐arginine (HFLA‐DOX) nanomotor with motion ability and sustained release of nitric oxide (NO) to achieve deep drug penetration and effective reversal of MDR in cancer chemotherapy is designed. The targeted recognition, penetration of blood vessels, intercellular penetration, special intracellular distribution (escaping from lysosomes and accumulating in Golgi and nucleus), 3D multicellular tumor spheroids (3D MTSs) penetration, degradation of tumor extracellular matrix (ECM), and reversal of MDR based on the synergistic effects of the motion ability and sustained NO release performance of the NO‐driven nanomotors are investigated in detail. Correspondingly, a new chemotherapy mode called recognition‐penetration‐reversal‐elimination is proposed, whose effectiveness is verified by in vitro cellular experiments and in vivo animal tumor model, which can not only provide effective solutions to these challenges encountered in cancer chemotherapy, but also apply to other therapy methods for the special deep‐tissue penetration ability of a therapeutic agent., Deep drug penetration and effective reversal of multidrug resistance in cancer chemotherapy can be efficiently realized by motion ability and sustained release of nitric oxide (NO) by NO‐driven nanomotor.

The sustained release of heparin in sufficient amounts and over long time is a challenge to drive the development of functional materials. In this paper SBA-15 mesoporous silica is selected in the search for a favorable morphology and optimized surface state for the sustained release of heparin. In situ carbonization of the template in the as-synthesized sample enables SBA-15 to possess narrowed channels with rougher surfaces, while modification with (aminopropyl)triethoxysilane (APTES) through a one-pot synthesis offers SBA-15 with positive charges to attract heparin through electro-static interactions. The structure of modified SBA-15 samples is assessed with XRD (powder X-ray diffraction analysis), nitrogen adsorption–desorption and electron microscopy techniques, and their performance is evaluated in adsorption and release of heparin. These modifications improve the heparin adsorption in SBA-15 and thus promote its sustained release, prolonging the release-equilibrium time up to 60 days. Among them, the SBA-15 sample modified with APTES can trap three times as much heparin as the parent SBA-15, and the release ratio is elevated to 80% (that of SBA-15 is 38%), realizing the best performance of controlling heparin release to date.

The simultaneous loading of multifunctional drugs has been regarded as one of the major challenges in the drug delivery system. Herein, a mesoporous silica coating was constructed on a bare metal stent surface by an evaporation-induced self-assembly method, in which both hydrophilic and hydrophobic drugs (heparin and rapamycin) were encapsulated by a one-pot method for the first time, and the release behaviors of these drugs were studied. The releasing mechanisms of these drugs were investigated in detail. Rapid release of heparin can achieve anticoagulation and endothelialization, whereas slow release of rapamycin can realize antiproliferative therapy for long term. In vitro hemocompatibility and promotion for proliferation of vein endothelial cells and the inhibition of smooth muscle cells were conducted. In vivo stent implantation results verify that the mesoporous silica coating with both heparin and rapamycin can successfully accelerate the endothelialization process and realize the antiproliferative therapy for as long as 3 months. These results indicate that this multifunctional mesoporous coating containing both hydrophilic and hydrophobic drugs might be a promising stent coating in the future.

A new strategy for fabricating an optimal porous strong base was reported for the first time. Magnesium and zinc acetates were mixed by microwave irradiation followed by carbonization at 823 K. Zn incorporation enabled the magnesia nanoparticles to have more surface defects, and about 80% of the basic sites were strong ones with the ability to capture CO2 at 473 K, which is the highest proportion to date. These porous binary metal oxides had large surface areas between 130–296 m2 g−1.

Multiple modification of SBA-15 in its electrostatic and geometric properties was simultaneously performed by titanium substitution in the framework of mesoporous silica, in order to fabricate versatile drug releaser based on the Ti-SBA-15 with subtle “critical state”. The SBA-15 with proper Ti-content, no more than 4.2 μmol g−1 without formation of TiO2, was synthesized via special hydrothermal conditions with assistance of fluorine ion, and the resulting composite had the appropriately distorted mesoporous structure provided the Si/Ti of initial gel no less than 50, plus the lowered surface negative charge (Zeta-potential). The controlled Ti-substitution enabled SBA-15 to be more active in adsorbing negative charged drug like heparin, especially in dilute solution. Also, sustained heparin release was achieved on the Ti-SBA-15 with a little initial burst. Ti-substitution also improved the loading and release of small drug such as ibuprofen on SBA-15, compensating the lack of fine geometric confinement in mesoporous silica. Moreover, liquid adsorption of probes with different negative charge and molecular size, including heparin, ibuprofen and volatile nitrosamines N-nitrosopyrrolidine was investigated to explore the influence of Ti-substitution on the electrostatic attraction and structural distortion of SBA-15, offering a tool to characterize the mesoporous materials and providing a valuable clue for design of new drug releaser.

Two new basic ionic liquids (ILs) are designed and synthesized in order to conquer the challenge arising from the capture of CO2 in flue gas whose temperature is over 373 K, and they possess a suitable basic strength to adsorb CO2 at 393 K with the capacity of 22-49 mg g(-1). After these ILs are immobilized on mesoporous alumina or silica, equimolar CO2 capture is realized at 393 K for the first time. Besides, these adsorbents can be regenerated at 443 K to form a feasible cycle for controlling CO2 emission in flue gas. Theoretical calculations indicated the key role played by the mesoporous support in promoting CO2 adsorption via electrostatic interactions between support and ILs. An unwonted promotion of the support's ζ-potential on the performance of ILs is revealed, which induces the immobilized ILs to be oriented in a favorable dispersion, enhancing the efficiency of ILs in the CO2 adsorption at elevated temperature. This study proposes a new strategy for the sustainable development of novel adsorbent.

The achievement of increasing both the adsorption and release of heparin in a drug delivery system is reported. The reduced graphene oxide (rGO) material can efficiently adsorb heparin in aqueous solution up to 112 mg g−1 owing to its layered and stacked structure. Moreover, this carbon vessel is able to release 90 mg g−1 of the drug within 30 days, exhibiting the highest released/adsorbed ratio of 80% to date and has become a promising candidate as a novel drug releaser.

A new strategy utilizing carbon insertion to synthesize a highly efficient CO2-capturer through self-dispersion of MgO by co-existing carbon is reported in this paper. Carbon-adulterated magnesia is formed in situ during the carbonization of magnesium acetate for the first time, suppressing the aggregation of MgO nanoparticles and increasing the accessibility of basic sites for CO2. With few carbon particles (about 2%) inside as the adulterant, the porous MgO composites have a surface area of greater than 200 m2 g−1 and a high CO2 adsorption capacity of up to 28 mg g−1 at 473 K, offering a new candidate material for adsorbing CO2 in flue gas vents.

N-nitrosamines are characterized with an N-nitroso group N–NO. N-nitrosamines are strong carcinogens or potent carcinogens. Nitrosamines occur widely in the environment, e.g., as tobacco smoke that causes cancers of lungs, larynx, oral cavity and pharynx, pancreas, kidney and bladder. It is difficult to capture selectively N-nitrosamines in the environment. Therefore, zeolite, which is a molecular sieve, may help to sequester N-nitrosamines. Zeolites are a class of aluminosilicates, characterized by ordered microporous structures with acidic–basic sites on the surface and energetic field inside the pores. They have been widely applied in industry as adsorbents and catalysts because of their unique shape selectivity. Here, we review the latest research on adsorption and catalytic degradation of N-nitrosamines by zeolite materials. The efficiency of zeolite is increased using metal oxides. Removal of N-nitrosamines in smoke is discussed.

To expand heterogeneous catalysis to health care and to control the carcinogens in environment, molecular sieves are put into the tobacco rod of cigarettes as the cigarette-catalyst (cig-cat) to in situ eliminate tobacco-specific nitrosamines (TSNAs) in mainstream smoke during the combustion of cigarette. Several zeolites and mesoporous silicas are utilized for comparison, in order to assess the impact of pore size, Al content, morphology as well as acid–base property of additives on the reduction of TSNA content in smoke. When these additives are activated as the hot zone in burning cigarette approaches, they will remove TSNAs once these carcinogens transfer or form in the smoke. Actually they can remove the TSNA up to 35% in the smoke of Burley type tobacco, and most of these additives can keep their structure after tobacco combustion. These latest results are beneficial for controlling the environment pollution caused by smoking.

Mesoporous silica MCM-41 and SBA-15 were chosen to study the adsorption and release of bulky biomolecule heparin, in order to develop new heparin controlled delivery system and expand the application of mesoporous materials in life science. To explore how the structure of support such as pore size and surface state affects the accommodation and release of heparin, we used decane as swelling agent to enlarge pores of MCM-41, introduced amino groups for improving the biocompatibility of support, and controllably retained templates in the as-synthesized sample. The influence of modification on the structure of samples was investigated by XRD and N(2) adsorption-desorption, whereas their performance of adsorbing and releasing heparin was assessed with that of toluidine blue method. Both enlarged pore and organic modification significantly promoted the adsorption and prolonged the release of heparin in MCM-41, and the release was characterized with a three-stage release model. The mechanism of heparin release from mesoporous material was studied by fitting the release profiles to the theoretical equation. As expected, some mesoporous composites could release heparin in the long term with tuned dosage.

A new class of periodic mesoporous organosilicas (PMOs), which contains various hydrophilic groups of –OH, –O– and –S–, is successfully synthesized with novel bridged organosilica precursor under the acid-catalyzed and inorganic-salt-assisted conditions. These hybrid materials possess the ordered mesostructure with uniform pore size distributions, thick framework walls, thermal stability and specific functional groups; and they are carefully characterized by XRD, N2 adsorption, TGA, FT-IR, TEM and NMR spectroscopies. Moreover, horseradish peroxidase (HRP) is immobilized on these new PMO composites for the first time, and their enzyme activity in the oxidation of 1,3,5-trimethylbenzene (TMB) is elevated in the range of 25–59% compared with that of free HRP in solution. Again, the HRP immobilized samples can be reused for many cycles, resulting from the interfacial activation of the enzyme when it is attached to the surface of hybrid hosts where is filled with organic groups and hydrophobic parts.

A new synthetic strategy, named "carbonization in limited space" and based on the specific interaction between eutectic salt and dual-ionic liquids (dual-ILs), is reported in this article. N-Containing dual-ILs (1,4-diethyl-1,4-diazaniabicyclo[2,2,2]octane imidazolide-4,5-dicyanoiazolide, [2C2DABCO](2+)[Im](-)[CN-Im](-)) were synthesized as new carbon-nitrogen precursors, while eutectic salt was chosen as a reuseable template in order to facilely fabricate the N-doped porous carbon with sheetlike morphology. Nitrogen can be directly and efficiently incorporated into the porous carbon, resulting in the materials with suitable N content, tunable pore structure, and controllable thickness of sheet as well as high surface area. They exhibited good performance as electrodes for supercapacitors, photocatalysts in degradation of methyl orange (MO) under visible light, and the sorbent to capture tobacco-specific N-nitrosamines (TSNAs) in solution, offering a new simplified but effective method to prepare versatile carbon material.

Novel phenol-capturer was prepared by modifying the as-synthesized mesoporous silica MCM-41 with tetraethylenepentamine (TEPA), not only saving the energy and time for removal of template, but also opening the way to utilize the micelles for adsorption. Once the organic modifier was distributed in the template micelle of MCM-41 to form a web within the mesoporous channel, the composite could adsorb more phenols in gas stream than activated carbon for the first time. With an unwanted high adsorption capacity, this mesoporous silica-amine composite represented potential application for trapping phenols, especially in tobacco smoke to protect environment.

In a new strategy for loading drugs into mesoporous silica, a hydrophilic (heparin) or hydrophobic drug (ibuprofen) is encapsulated directly in a one-pot synthesis by evaporation-induced self-assembly. In situ drug loading significantly cuts down the preparation time and dramatically increases the loaded amount and released fraction of the drug, and appropriate drug additives favor a mesoporous structure of the vessels. Drug loading was verified by FTIR spectroscopy and release tests, which revealed much longer release with a larger amount of heparin or ibuprofen compared to postloaded SBA-15. Besides, the in vitro anticoagulation properties of the released heparin and the biocompatibility of the vessels were carefully assessed, including activated partial thromboplastin time, thrombin time, hemolysis, platelet adhesion experiments, and the morphologies of red blood cells. A concept of new drug-release agents with soft core and hard shell is proposed and offers guidance for the design of novel drug-delivery systems.

Cancer is a terrible killer that destroys the health and career of humans. Among various factors that induce cancer and tumor, environment pollution is the chief criminal because it affects the human life timelessly and universally. Human cancer is influenced by life style, smoking and taking processed meats as well as overdrinking beer are harmful for health because of the existence of N-nitrosamines. N-Nitrosamines are compounds with an N-nitroso group N-NO. They have been recognized as strong carcinogens or potent carcinogens, and the nitrosamines in environment such as tobacco smoke cause serious health hazard to people. Tobacco smoking is associated with the cancers of lungs, larynx, oral cavity and pharynx, pancreas, kidney, and bladder. Consequently, the health consequences of exposure to environmental tobacco smoke has been a cause of scientific and public health concern because of increasing evidence showing that acute respiratory illness, chronic respiratory symptoms are associated with exposure to tobacco smoke. Nevertheless, no matter how often antismoking campaigns are shown, some people will never give up cigarette so that smoking is still a serious environmental problem in many countries.

To fabricate an efficient releaser of heparin, which is an extensively used anticoagulant, aluminum containing plugged mesoporous silica SBA-15 is prepared using a one-pot synthesis process. A suitable aluminum additive in the starting mixture enables plugs to be formed inside hexagonal channels and Al species to be incorporated into the mesostructure, evidence for which is provided by powder X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), N2 sorption measurements and 27Al MAS NMR tests. Incorporation of aluminum in SBA-15 reduces the negative charge (Zeta-potential) and tailors the surface roughness of the channel through forming plugs, and the former significantly improves heparin adsorption while the latter retards heparin release. As a result, these modified composites adsorb 2–4 times more heparin than parent SBA-15 and release 60–130% more of the drug over several weeks; the sample possessing both an Al-component and plug structure can sustain release of heparin for 6 weeks, demonstrating the increased efficiency of multiply functionalized SBA-15 in the controllable release of heparin and offering a valuable clue for design of novel drug releasers.

Porous g-C3N4 was synthesized by a facile template-free method to control the reaction of polymer according to Le Chatelier's principle. The resulting porous g-C3N4 material has high Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) surface area (201–209 m2 g−1) and large pore volume (0.50–0.52 m3 g−1), and shows a ten times enhanced photocatalytic activity for methyl orange (MO) photodegradation under visible light (λ > 420 nm) irradiation.

A novel hierarchical periodic mesoporous organosilica (PMO) monolith is synthesized by using N,S-bis[3-(triethoxysilyl)propyl]-carbamothioic acid for the first time, in order to fabricate a highly efficient enzyme immobilizer. The hierarchical monolith is spontaneously formed with mild shearing force without further additives, in which the primary particles can be selectively prepared to be inter-connected with each other end to end to form a net-like framework throughout the whole monolith, and the inorganic/organic composition is finely controlled by adjusting the initial composition of the silica precursors. As the result, an ordered net framework with micrometer sized macropores and large mesopores is simultaneously obtained together with a high organic content, favoring high enzyme immobilization, in which they demonstrate an enhanced adsorption capacity, superior immobilization stability and good reusability. Especially, the PMO monolith can adsorb 126 mg g−1 of horseradish peroxidase (HRP), higher than double that of the power-like analogue (38 mg g−1); and the bioactivity is three times higher than that of the free enzyme, indicating the strong advantages of morphology assistance in enzyme immobilization.

A synergistic effect between a self-dispersion of MgO and biomass-derived carbon in the adsorption of CO2 is reported for the first time. Magnesia and carbon mixed particles are formed in situ during the carbonization of magnesium acetate on activated carbon made from coconut, increasing the accessibility of basic sites for CO2 adsorption. With these complementary effects of the hierarchical structural support, the composite containing 20% magnesia can trap 5 times more CO2 than 20% MgO/SiO2, in the harsh instantaneous adsorption of CO2 at 100 and 150 °C, offering a new candidate for the adsorption of CO2 in flue gas vents.

The design and preparation of a new “self-protected” zeolite catalyst are reported in this paper for the first time, in order to face the challenges arising from environmental protection, in selective catalytic degrading of tobacco specific nitrosamine (TSNA) carcinogens in environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). A new method to synthesize NaY zeolite with uniform microsphere morphology via an organic amine TMAOH as bifunctional template is reported in this study. The spherical zeolite is prepared by a one-step hydrothermal crystallization without any post-treatment or other shape-directing agent. It has a rugged surface like a cluster of crystal grains and its crystallization process is monitored in detail by means of XRD and SEM. To assess how the zeolite morphology affects its catalytic performance in complex systems, this material was directly mixed with tobacco shred and added into cigarettes to in situ degrade TSNA in smoke. As a result, the clustered zeolite microsphere can avoid the interference of particulate matter in smoke and shows a high selectivity in the removal of TSNA. This synthetic method offers a novel way of preparing zeolites with a spherical morphology, which has great potential application in the fields of catalysis, adsorption and separation.

The design and preparation of a new “self-protected” mesoporous adsorbent is reported for the first time, in order to selectively adsorb tobacco specific nitrosamine (TSNA) carcinogens in environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). Hierarchical rockery-like MCM-41 monoliths with the tunable hollow structure and macropores are synthesized under special conditions by controlling the formation and connection of primary particles: through self-assembly and flow induced orientation, the initial formed prism-like primary particles are compelled to form circular disc- or ellipse-like secondary structures, and these domains connect together to form flats that are linked by small flats to yield units on millimeter scale, finally these units are randomly crooked to generate monoliths at centimeter level. These monolithic materials have similar textural properties, surface state and the same primary particles as common MCM-41, but they exhibit unique selectivity in the capture of TSNA in cigarette smoke. They also avoid unnecessary trapping of accompanying particles, which is realized for the first time because of the morphology-induced new function, opening a new way to create superior selectivity in complicated adsorption processes, where the target is adhered on the particles in a gas stream.