1. Could you explain the significance of your article to the non-specialist? 

Surfactant-templated mesoporous materials present a family of inorganic nanostructured materials, and a growing interest has been focused on these materials due to their widely emerging applications in areas such as adsorption, separation, catalysis, drug delivery, photonic and electronic devices, etc. Up to now, rational control on the mesostructures and systematic tailoring pore architecture remains a challenge for their practical preparations. In this paper, a facile process involving an anionic surfactant induced mesophase transformation to synthesize large pore mesoporous silica has been developed in the nonionic triblock copolymer assembly system. Evident synergism of the anionic surfactant in the nonionic copolymer assembly renders it a colorful organization, which can guide the successive phase transformation in an individual system to systematically control the mesostructures of the resulting materials. In view of the fact that built anionic-nonionic surfactants have been widely used in industrial fields, research based on the mixed-surfactant assembly will ultimately provide more options for economical and large-scale productions of mesoporous materials with controllable structures.

2. What has motivated you to conduct this work? 

Since the pioneering discovery reported by Mobil researchers, many efforts have been conducted on the preparation of surfactant-templated mesoporous materials, and ample evidences are available that the pore structures, including channel connectivity and pore size, of such "cavity-crystals" can be remarkably predominated by adjusting the synthetic parameters. In general, only individual silica mesostructure can be accomplished in a single triblock copolymer templated system even with significant variation in the reaction conditions. How to systematically prepare mesoporous materials with controllable structures in a most simplified composition seems to be very urgent for their practical applications. Thus, this motivates us to do this work.

3. Where do you see this work developing in the future? 

The systematic preparation of highly ordered mesoporous silica materials in a simplified anionic-nonionic mixed surfactants system may not only be theoretically important, but also result in a rational approach for economical and large-scale productions of mesoporous materials with diverse symmetries. We expected that resulting mesoporous silica materials could be of importance for potential applications in the fields of adsorption, separation, catalysis, drug delivery, electronic devices, low dielectric constant materials and beyond.

4. Are there any particular challenges facing future research in this area? 

The big challenge facing the mesoporous materials community is to step from laboratory studies to industrial applications. Although the potential application of such materials has recently been widely studied in many areas, more efforts are still needed for the continuing study of their practical applications to commercialize mesoporous materials in the future. It is conceivable that the forthcoming practical applications in fields such as catalysis, separation, adsorption, drug delivery, electronic devices, low dielectric constant materials and beyond, will stimulate more research interests in this area, and much more exciting developments in mesoporous materials will also be delivered.