Dendritic Mesoporous Silica Hollow Spheres with One-Pot Self-Templated Interfacial Diffusion Method

Silica hollow spheres with dendritic pores are emerging as a promising delivery platform in biomedical applications. However, the fabrication of dendritic mesoporous silica hollow spheres (DMSHS) with a simple method for high delivery efficiency for both hydrophilic and hydrophobic bioactive ingredients remains challenging. Here, we fabricated well-defined and controllable DMSHS with a one-pot self-templated method. Typically, DMSHS have a large surface area (862 m2 g–1), radially oriented accessible mesochannels (4.39 nm), tunable diameter (450–620 nm), and shell thickness (130–230 nm). Interfacial diffusion is proposed for the DMSHS formation mechanism. As a demonstration, DMSHS were used to load both hydrophilic protein (lysozyme) and hydrophobic bioactive molecule (2-phenylethanol) on one carrier. Due to its unique morphology and hybrid structure, DMSHS showed great loading performance and promising nanocarrier for control release design. DMSHS could potentially be an ideal platform for guest species delivery.