Department of Chemistry and Center for Nanoscience (CeNS), Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Butenandtstraße 11, 81377 Munich, Germany.
Phys Chem Chem Phys. 2011 Mar 21;13(11):5017-33. doi: 10.1039/c0cp02210a. Epub 2011 Feb 16.
Mesoporous silica nanomaterials are a novel class of materials that offer a highly complex porous network with nanometre-sized channels into which a wide amount of differently sized guests can be incorporated. This makes them an ideal host for various applications for example in catalysis, chromatography and nanomedicine. For these applications, analyzing the host properties and understanding the complicated host-guest interactions is of pivotal importance. In this perspective we review some of our recent work that demonstrates that single molecule microscopy techniques can be utilized to characterize the porous silica host with unprecedented detail. Furthermore, the single molecule studies reveal sample heterogeneities and are a highly efficient tool to gain direct mechanistic insights into the host-guest interactions. Single molecule microscopy thus contributes to a thorough understanding of these nanomaterials enabling the development of novel tailor-made materials and hence optimizing their applicability significantly.
介孔硅纳米材料是一类新型材料，具有高度复杂的多孔网络，纳米级通道可容纳大量不同尺寸的客体。这使得它们成为各种应用的理想主体，例如在催化、色谱和纳米医学中。对于这些应用，分析主体性质和理解复杂的主体-客体相互作用至关重要。在这篇观点文章中，我们回顾了我们最近的一些工作，这些工作表明单分子显微镜技术可用于以前所未有的细节来表征多孔硅主体。此外，单分子研究揭示了样品异质性，是深入了解主体-客体相互作用的高效工具。因此，单分子显微镜有助于透彻理解这些纳米材料，从而开发新型定制材料，并显著优化其适用性。
