Investigation of compound state of SiO2-TiO2 aerogel synthesized through controlled sol-gel reaction

Abstract

In this work, a compound state of silica-titania aerogel was investigated through sol-gel reaction for hybridization of silica and titania with increasing reactivity by using high surface area and charge imbalances. By minimizing the sol-gel reaction rate difference and preparing a homogeneous and stable sol, a compound state of silica-titania aerogel could be obtained, without separation onto single metal oxide aerogel. The benefits of using the sol-gel synthesis method for synthesizing silica-titania compound aerogels are over a limit of substitution solubility and get binary metal oxide compound material. Diffraction and spectroscopic analyses showed that the heterogeneous linkage resulted from interaction among silicon, titanium, and oxygen ions. The coordination environment changes by the formation of an Si-O-Ti linkage following interaction among ions without phase separation on SiO2 and TiO2 aerogels. Thus, the atomically controlled sol-gel reaction can be used to design new metal-oxide-based compound aerogels and immiscible oxide materials.