MCM-41 mesoporous silica sheet with ordered perpendicular nanochannels for protein delivery and the assembly of Ag nanoparticles in catalytic applications

•MCM-41 mesoporous silica sheet with perpendicular nanochannels were fabricated.•Petroleum ether was used as a cosolvent with water in the fabrication system.•BSA loading amount could be achieved as high as 598 mg per gram silica materials.•The protein release kinetics could be finely controlled by pH.•Ag-payloaded materials showed effective catalytic performance of 4-nitrophenol.

In this study, well-ordered microscale MCM-41 mesoporous silica sheets of ca. 80 nm thicknesses were first prepared by using water and petroleum ether as cosolvents in the presence of CTAB as template and TEOS as silica precursor. The as-synthesized materials showed excellent bovine serum albumin proteins loading capacity (598 mg protein per gram silica materials), controllable sustained protein release profile, and effective catalytic reduction performance of 4-nitrophenol after high payload of Ag nanoparticles.

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