Mesoporous silica and mesoporous metallosilicates with Al, Ti and Fe as foreign metal species were successfully synthesized by the rapid room temperature method. Mesoporous metallosilicates with low contents of foreign metals possessed high surface area (S-a), large mesopore volume (V-mp) and highly ordered hexagonal mesoporous structure. Increases in foreign metal contents caused disordering the mesoporous structures and lowering the S-a and V-mp values. Bleaching of aqueous methylene blue (MB) by mesoporous silica and metallosilicates was investigated. Mesoporous aluminosilicate and ferrosilicate with cation-exchangeable ability showed the excellent property for the adsorption of MB of cationic dye, while mesoporous ferrosilicate and titanosilicate which absorbed UV lights catalyzed the photocatalytic decomposition of MB under UV-illumination. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.