Synthesis of montmorillonite-chitosan hollow and hierarchical mesoporous spheres with single-template layer-by-layer assembly.

In order to develop a facile and precisely controlled approach to synthesize hierarchical mesoporous materials with tailored property, in this work, a novel study was carried out to fabricate montmorillonite-chitosan hollow and hierarchical mesoporous spheres (MMTNS@CS-HMPHS) based on single-template layer-by-layer (LbL) assembly. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), specific surface area analysis and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analyses were carried out to characterize the morphology and surface properties of MMTNS@CS-HMPHS. Benefitting from the unique lamellar structure of MMTNS, mesoporous channels are formed on the shell of MMTNS@CS hollow spheres, resulting in high surface area. Moreover, the surface functionalization and pore size of MMTNS@CS-HMPHS can be easily tuned, due to the tailored property through LbL assembly method. Besides the unique microstructure, MMTNS@CS-HMPHS also possesses the active sites generated from both MMT and chitosan, which greatly promotes its performance in fields of adsorption, drug delivery and catalyst supports, etc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]