Prolonged-release performance of perfume encapsulated by tailoring mesoporous silica spheres

Mesoporous silica (MS) spheres with size-controllable pore channels and regular spherical shape were used as supports for the encapsulation of hydrophilic perfume. The MS spheres were tailored by expanding pore size in order to have high loading content. The perfume-encapsulating MS spheres so obtained were followed by assembling 10 layers of polyelectrolyte shell on the microspheres' surfaces for the purpose of good prolonged-release performance. The morphologies and prolonged-release performance of perfume-encapsulating MS spheres with 10-layer polyelectrolyte shells were characterized by transmission electron microscopy, pore size analysis, thermogravimetric analysis and UV-vis and FTIR spectroscopy. The results showed that with MS spheres constructed in this way, effective prolonged-release performance can be achieved. We also demonstrated that these MS spheres can indeed be used for the prolonged release of perfume. Copyright (C) 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.