Biomineralization, the Synthesis of Mesoporous Silicas

In the previous sections, we focused on chemical theories for the evolutionary origin of life-like sterns. We learned that an important condition in the initiation of early life is a microporous or cell-type enclosed enviromnent that can sustain local concentration 

An extensive research activity in biomineralization has develop ed that investigates the structure-directing principles described above, but now chemically without the use of biological sterns. This is of great interest in the context of designing the microporous cell-type enclosed conditions for protocell systems. Second, conversion of protocell-type catalytic sterns into heterogeneous catalytic systems requires mineralization chemistry similar to biomineralization. 

Zeohtes are well-defined microporous sterns that we introduced earlier. They have micropores 1 nm. Their synthesis requires the use of organic template molecules. As we described in Section 8.7.2, these template molecules organize sihcate oligomers into 

According to Zhao et al.[ l, a major breakthrough in biomineralization was the discovery of how to synthesize such materials at different pH. Kresge et al.P°l originally 

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