Enhancing the exploitation of functional nanomaterials through spatial confinement: the case of inorganic submicron capsules

Belén Vaz, Verónica Salgueiriño , Moisés Pérez-Lorenzo, and Miguel A. Correa-Duarte

Langmuir 2015, 31, 8745‒8755

Hollow inorganic nanostructures have attracted much interest in the last years due to their many applications in different areas of science and technology. In this Feature article, we overview part of our current work concerning the collective use of plasmonic and magnetic nano-particles located in voided nanostructures and explore the more specific operational issues that should be taken into account in the design of inorganic nanocapsules. In this line, we focus our attention on the ap-plications of silica-based submicron capsules aiming to stress the im-portance of creating nanocavities in order to further exploit the great potential of these functional nanomaterials. Additionally, we will ex-amine some of the recent research on this topic and try to establish a perspective for future developments in this area.