Facile pore size control and low-cost synthesis of mesoporous silica nanoparticles based on rice husk

Abstract

We design silica from rice husk as a precursor for mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSN), which is eco-friendly, low-cost, and abundant in availability, replacing tetraethyl orthosilicate, which is expensive and its vapours cause blindness, by the facile method, i.e., sol-gel. The different pore sizes of MSN have been successfully reached by tuning the synthesis conditions of surfactant concentrations and hydrothermal treatment temperatures. The smallest pore size of MSN is 2.62 nm, with the most significant surface area of 19.169 m2/g. The higher surfactant concentrations affect the decrease of particle size of MSN, but the higher hydrothermal treatment temperatures affect the opposite. In addition, these factors affect the morphology, the graph of isotherm, and the atomic elements of MSN. Thus, the resulting MSN will be applied to nanocontainers of corrosion inhibitor because of getting the small pore size.