Location of enzymes in ordered mesoporous materials

Trabajo presentado en el 8th International Mesostructured Materials Symposium, celebrado en Awaji Island, Hyogo (Japón) del 20 al 24 de mayo de 2013.The location of enzymes inside the pores is not easy to be confinned and commonly a combination of indirect techniques has been used for the characterization of these materials such as N2 adsorption or thermogravimetry. The only direct and the most complete method for the characterization of mesoporous solids is transmission electron microscopy (TEM) When the subject of interest are low scattered guest materials, such as C based materials, scarming transmission electron microscopy (STEM) combined with a high angle amrnlar dark field detector (HAADF) is more suitable as the contrast is related to the atomic number Z. The current studyI , proves the feasibility of using C, corrected STEM microscopy simultaneously combined with EELS analysis to image the mesopores of silica structures, SBA-12, PMO and PMA, with ultra-high resolution and to unambiguously determine the presence of enzyme (lipase and laccase) molecnles inside de cavities and channels of the material.The authors would like to thank MAT2009-13569 project for funding.Peer Reviewe