Templating with Nature: Eco-friendly Synthesis of Hierarchically Porous Silica Materials via Sustainable Coacervate Mineralization

Inspired by nature's biomineralization strategies, we report a sustainable pathway for fabricating hierarchically porous silica materials (HPSMs) through coacervate-mediated mineralization, using renewable lignosulfonate and poly-l-lysine as soft templates. The resulting HPSMs exhibit a unique combination of structural features, including a high surface area (791.4 m²/g), tunable hierarchical porosity, and abundant silanol groups, achieved under mild aqueous conditions without toxic surfactants or organic solvents. These HPSMs demonstrate outstanding organic dye removal via synergistic adsorption-Fenton catalysis, which achieves a 100% removal rate of organic dyes in 30 min, outperforming conventional materials with a single structure. Moreover, the material loaded with Cu active sites exhibited superior performance in hydrogenation reduction compared to the single-structure support catalyst, achieving complete conversion of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural to 2,5-bis(hydroxymethyl)furan at 100 °C. This work offers a sustainable platform for functional nanomaterials in various applications and provides a blueprint for biomimetic materials design.