Mesoporous Materials: a platform towards programmable matter

G. J. A. A. SOLER ILLIA

Conferencia; Self-assembly and Hierarchical Materials in Biomedicine: Drug Delivery, Tissue Engineering, Sensing and Safety Issues; 2018

The combination of nanomaterials synthesis with self-assembly processes led to asignificant advance in the production of hybrid inorganic-organic materials with hierarchicalstructures and localized functions. Our ability to produce highly precise complexarchitectures with well-defined localized functions opens the path to create intelligentmatter that can change their physical or chemical properties in response to theenvironment. Programmable nanosystems can be envisaged, in which confinementeffects, responsivity, or collaborative functionality can be imparted into the structurethrough the control of positional chemistry of different chemical building blocks.In this presentation, we will illustrate the richness of this emergent field by focusing inmesoporous materials (MM). Mesoporous architectures can be produced through the self-assembly of inorganic nanobuilding blocks in the presence of supramolecular templates.MM can then be decorated by small molecular species, biomolecules, polymers ornanospecies. An amazing variety of chemical behaviors can be programmed into thesestructures, from tunable catalysis to light guiding or responsiveness to external stimuli. Inaddition to synthetic and characterization tools, theoretical models and simulations areessential to understand the complexity of the synthesis paths and the final properties. Thisin-depth knowledge is key to evolve from materials synthesis to ultimate nanosystemsdesign. We will present examples of tunable catalysts, enzyme cascade hosts, intelligentbioscaffolds, remotely activated nanoparticles, chemical-to-optical transducers or perm-selective membranes. A potentially infinite variety of nanosystems with externallycontrollable behavior is at our disposal, opening the path to design intelligent matter.