Nanoengineering of Core–Shell Magnetic Mesoporous Microspheres with Tunable Surface Roughness

Functional core–shell mesoporous microspheres with integrated functions, controlled structure, and surface properties and morphologies have received increasing attention due to their excellent physicochemical properties. Herein, core–shell magnetic mesoporous materials with cauliflower-like morphology and tunable surface roughness have been synthesized through a kinetics-controlled interface co-assembly and deposition of mesostructured nanocomposites on Fe 3 O 4 @RF microspheres (RF refers to resorcinol formaldehyde resin). The obtained microspheres, synthesized via this interface nanoengineering method, possess well-defined sandwich structure with a tunable rough morphology, uniform size (560–1000 nm), perpendicularly aligned mesopores (∼5.7 nm) in the outer shell, RF-protected magnetic responsive core, high surface area up to 382 m 2 /g, and large pore volume of 0.66 cm 3 /g. As a result of the unique surface features and magnetic properties, these microspheres exhibit excellent performance in stabilizing and oxygen-free manipulating aqueous solutions in petroleum ether by a magnetic field. They also exhibit superior cell uptake properties compared with traditional smooth core–shell magnetic mesoporous silica microspheres, opening up the possible applications in fast drug delivery in cancer therapy.