A new strategy of morphology control was applied for mesoporous silica SBA-15 to fabricate efficient environment protector, and the micro- and macro-morphology of SBA-15 were simultaneously controlled in weak acidic condition by using citric acid. Through simply tuning the synthetic temperature, monolithic SBA-15 materials with tunable macroporous structure was fabricated by using mild shearing force field in the citric acid route. Owning to the strong promotion of special morphology, the SBA-15 monolith can efficiently eliminate the phenol from environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), and the reduction ratio is twice higher than that by tetraethylenepentamine (TEPA) modified powder-like SBA-15. These results indicated that morphology of mesoporous materials played a dominant role in environmental purification.

A new series of carbamothioic acid-containing periodic mesoporous organosilica (PMO) materials has been synthesized by a direct cocondensation method, in which an organosilica precursor N,S-bis[3-(triethoxysilyl)propyl]carbamothioic acid (MI) is treated with tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS), and the nonionic surfactant Pluronic 123 (P123) is used as a template under acidic conditions in the presence of inorganic additives. Moreover, the synthesis of the PMO material consisting of the MI precursor without TEOS has been realized. These novel PMO materials have large surface areas, well-ordered mesoporous structures, hollow fiberlike morphologies, and thick walls. They are also structurally well-ordered with a high organosilica precursor content, and the carbamothioic acid groups are thermally stable up to 250 °C. Furthermore, the organosilica materials exhibit hydrothermal stability in basic solution.

Aluminum-containing plugged mesoporous silica has been successfully prepared in an aqueous solution that contains triblock copolymer templates, nitrates, and silica sources but without using mineral acid. The acidity of the solution can be finely tuned from pH 1.4 to 2.8 according to the amount of the introduced aluminum species which ranged from an Al/Si molar ratio of 0.25/1 to 4.0/1. The aluminum nitrate additive in the starting mixture, along with the weak acidity produced by the nitrates, contributes to the formation of plugged hexagonal structures and the introduction of different amounts of aluminum species into the mesostructure. Characterization by X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, and N₂ sorption measurements show that the Al-containing plugged silicas possess well-ordered hexagonal mesostructures with high surface areas (700–860 m² g^–1), large pore volume (0.77–1.05 cm³ g^–1) and, more importantly, combined micropores and/or small mesopores in the cylindrical channels. Inductively coupled plasma–atomic emission spectrometry results show that 0.7–3.0 wt % aluminum can be introduced into the final samples. ²⁷Al MAS NMR results display that about 43–60% aluminum species are incorporated into the skeleton of the Al-containing silicas and the amount of the framework aluminum increases as the initial added nitrates rises. Scanning electron microscopy images reveal that the directly synthesized Al-containing plugged silica has a similar morphology to that of traditional SBA-15. Furthermore, the Al-containing plugged samples have excellent performances in the adsorption and the catalytic decomposition of isopropyl alcohol and nitrosamine. Finally, the direct synthesis method is used to produce plugged mesoporous silicas that contain other metals such as chromium and copper, and the resultant samples also show good catalytic activities.