(569cb) Unlocking the Holy Grail of Sustainable and Scalable Mesoporous Silica

Ordered mesoporous silica (OMS), discovered in the 1990s, have high degree of order and uniform size of their pores, with incredible promise for applications such as gas separation, catalysis, drug delivery and sensors. However, OMS is yet to see large scale commercial exploitation due to a long process involving toxic or hazardous chemicals and harsh conditions, causing it to be unsustainable and uneconomic [RSC Sustain., 2023,1, 432-438]. In order to circumvent these issues, bioinspired silica (BIS) synthesis has been developed, which use ambient temperature and neutral pH. However, despite these obvious advantages, BIS with order mesopores us yet to be realised, thus hampering their performance in comparison with OMS materials. This presentation will cover our recent efforts in using computational tools and experimental approaches to combine the desirable qualities of OMS and BIS.