An innovative and facile approach for preparing mesoporous silica membranes is described. The prepared membranes possess abundant, accessible, wormlike pores across the membrane. Narrow pore-size distribution and tunable pore sizes ranging from 2 to 6 nm have been obtained by using a solgel method with phosphoric acid as pore-forming agent. The prepared membranes have a potential application in ultrafiltration. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.