High Pore Volume Silica from Sodium Silicate: Synthesis and Characterization

High pore volume silica nanoparticles have attracted growing interest for their increasing applications in various fields such as catalyst carrier, coating additive, adsorbent, etc. It is interesting to both industry and academy to discover how large pore volume silica materials can be produced. In this study silica nanoparticles were synthesized by inexpensive Sol-Gel method and sodium silicate, as the main precursor. The effect of alcohol:sodium silicate ratio and aging temperature of silica nanoparticles were studied by XRD, FTIR, SEM and BET techniques to know chemical structure and morphology properties. The XRD data revealed that the structure formed from Nano silica powder is amorphous. The FTIR spectrum showed that the IR bands at ۷۹۴ cm⁻¹ and ۱۰۸۰ cm⁻¹ can be indicated to the asymmetric and symmetric stretching vibrations of the Si-O-Si linkages of the SiO₂ framework. The BET analysis revealed mesoporous structure and large surface area ranging from ۳۰۰ m²/g to ۵۳۰ m²/g. Microscopic observations revealed that the shape of particles are semi-spherical and regular granules. The analysis results showed that the particles size is raised by increasing the alcohol:sodium silicate ratio and the aging temperature of >۶۰ °C leads to irregular and larger particles.

کلیدواژه ها:

Silica ، Sol-gel ، Mesoporous ، BET