High-surface-area silica nanospheres (KCC-1) with a fibrous morphology.

The past decade has seen significant advances in the ability to fabricate new porous solids with ordered structures from a wide range of different materials, with silica being the most common. Porous materials and their nanoscopic version now seem set to contribute to the developments in areas ranging from microelectronics to medical diagnosis or targeting of drugs. The realm of mesoporous materials was extended after the emergence of Kresge s innovative method for the preparation of mesoporous silica materials (MCM-41) through the use of surfactants as organizing agents. After the inception of template-directed synthesis of silica, extensive research was conducted to control their morphologies, pore sizes, and structures. These templated techniques led to the synthesis of a variety of mesoporous and nanoscale silica materials with a wide range of morphologies that have been successfully used as supports in heterogeneous catalysis. The effectiveness of these materials as catalyst supports is mainly due to their microstructures, which allow active catalytic sites to disperse on the large internal surfaces and pores, which in turn improve the activity of the catalyst system. However, poor accessibility to these active sites inside the pores sometimes limits their applications for which significant mass transport is essential. Silica supports with easily accessible high surface areas (that is, not in the pores) are therefore needed. In quest of nanocatalysis by surface organometallic chemistry (SOMC), herein we present the synthesis of fibrous silica nanospheres (KCC-1) with high surface areas. To the best of our knowledge, silica nanospheres with this type of fibrous morphology (Figures 1 and 2) is unprecedented. The high surface area is due to the presence