Metal Species-Encapsulated Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticles: Current Advancements and Latest Breakthroughs

Despite their advantageous morphological attributes and attractive physicochemical properties, mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) are merely supported as carriers or vectors for a reason. Incorporating various metal species in the confined nanospaces of MSNs (M-MSNs) significantly enriches their mesoporous architecture and diverse functionalities, bringing exciting potentials to this burgeoning field of research. These incorporated guest species offer enormous benefits to the MSN hosts concerning the reduction of their eventual size and the enhancement of their performance and stability, among other benefits. Substantially, the guest species act through contributing to reduced aggregation, augmented durability, ease of long-term storage, and reduced toxicity, attributes that are of particular interest in diverse fields of biomedicine. In this review, the first aim is to discuss the current advancements and latest breakthroughs in the fabrication of M-MSNs, emphasizing the pros and cons, the confinement of various metal species in the nanospaces of MSNs, and various factors influencing the encapsulation of metal species in MSNs. Further, an emphasis on potential applications of M-MSNs in various fields, including in adsorption, catalysis, photoluminescence, and biomedicine, among others, along with a set of examples is provided. Finally, the advances in M-MSNs with perspectives are summarized.