Control the Morphologies and the Pore Architectures of Mesoporous Silicas through a Dual-Templating Approach

Hairui Wang,Hao Chen,Sibing Wang,Zhen Xu,Yi Li,Baozong Li

doi:10.1155/2012/371289

Abstract

Mesoporous silica nanospheres were prepared using a chiral cationic low-molecular-weight amphiphile and organic solvents such as toluene, cyclohexane, and tetrachlorocarbon through a dual-templating approach. X-ray diffraction, nitrogen sorption, field emission scanning electron microscopy, and transmission electron microscopy techniques have been used to characterize the mesoporous silicas. The volume ratio of toluene to water plays an important role in controlling the morphologies and the pore architectures of the mesoporous silicas. It was also found that mesoporous silica nanoflakes can be prepared by adding tetrahydrofuran to the reaction mixtures.

Highlights

It has been two decades since the discovery of ordered mesoporous silica materials [1]
As the organization of the templates is sensitive to the surrounding conditions such as temperature, concentration, and solvents, varieties of silica nanostructures can be prepared only using single template, and the morphologies and pore architectures of mesoporous silicas are controllable via modification of preparation conditions
Mesoporous silicas through a dual-templating approach have attracted much attention because of some special hollow-shell structures might be obtained by this way

Summary

Introduction

It has been two decades since the discovery of ordered mesoporous silica materials [1]. Mesoporous silicas were usually prepared through a sol-gel approach using the organic selfassemblies of surfactants [3], lipid [4], low-molecular-weight gelators [5], or block copolymers [6] as template. Since these templates can self-assemble into varieties of nanostructures, the obtained silicas exhibit many kinds of nanostructures such as films [7, 8], spheres [9], fibers [10], tubes [11], and ribbons [12]. Nanospheres and nanoflakes had been obtained by tuning the kind and amount of the organic solvents precisely

Experimental

Preparation of Mesoporous Silica Nanostructures

Results and Discussion

Summary