A cationic-cationic co-surfactant templating route for synthesizing well-defined multilamellar vesicular silica with an adjustable number of layers

Vesicular mesoporous silica with well-defined multilamellar structures was prepared using didodecyldimethylammonium bromide (DDAB)/cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) as a structure-directing agent. The number of vesicular silica layers can be tuned from 7 to 2 by changing the molar ratio of DDAB to CTAB.