In the synthesis of structured mesoporous composites constituted of mesoporous silica and metal oxide nanoparticles, one key element is represented by the size of the particles, which should be small enough to allow their incorporation within the porous structure while avoiding the collapse of the porous network or the formation of separate domains.
For this purpose the synthesis of ZnO nanoparticles was performed by optimizing an already reported procedure [32].
The precursor was represented by zinc acetate that undergoes basic hydrolysis, promoted by LiOH, forming the corresponding oxide.