Characterization of Mesoporous Materials

Abstract

AbstractNanotechnology has emerged as an important and rapidly growing field in the area of instrumentation techniques for investigating and characterizing mesoporous materials in recent years. This chapter discusses the various instrumentation techniques that are used to investigate and characterize mesoporous materials in order to determine particle size, pore morphology, structure and surface information. The key biophysical techniques used to classify the most mesoporous materials are powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray (EDX), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), nitrogen adsorption-desorption and solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). Direct approaches to obtain data from electron micrographs of mesoporous materials include microscopy-based techniques such as SEM and TEM. The diffraction technique and TEM can reveal structural order in mesoporous materials, while SEM can reveal particle size and morphology. The porosity and surface area of the formulated materials are determined by N2 adsorption analysis, while the porous structure is determined by DSC. The NMR measurements provide information about material surfaces, while EDX provides qualitative and quantitative information about elemental-chemical composition. A brief description of the principle and graphical analysis for each technique has been discussed in detail.KeywordsCharacterizationCrystal structure mesoporousMorphologyPore sizeStabilitySurface area