Silica-based hybrid nanomaterials with well-defined architectures

Silica nanomaterials with well-defined architectures exhibit low cytotoxicity, uniform size, and excellent chemical stability, which in addition to their low-cost, versatile functionalization chemistry and relative ease of large-scale preparation make them very suited to the role of host material for the development of novel silica-based nanoarchitectures targeted to biomedical, catalytic and photoelectronic applications. This chapter surveys the recent research progresses on the fabrication strategies and the corresponding applications of silica and silica-based hybrid nanostructures: 1) silica nanostructures with varied morphologies such as silica solid spheres, capsules, wires, tubes and novel multilevel interior structures; 2) silica-based hybrid nanostructures with various compositions such as silica/polymer hybrids obtained by "grafting from" approach or templating methods, silica/metal nanoparticles achieved by "surface deposition", "matrix entrapping" and templating strategies, silica/carbon nanotubes hybrids achieved on the basis of covalent and non-covalent surface-modified carbon nanotubes, as well as other hierarchical complex structures; 3) silica-based Janus spheres. In the last section of this chapter, the perspectives and outlook of the current research challenges and future research directions in the related fields are presented.