Mesoporous structure stability of zirconium-doped mesoporous silica at elevated temperature

Abstract

In this work, the thermal stability of mesoporous structure of MCM-41 materials with different zirconium contents (Zr-MCM-41) was investigated. The results show that the obtained Zr-MCM-41 materials retain a relatively good long range order of mesopores up to 1000 °C. Increasing the calcining temperature to 1050 °C, the mesopore openings become anisotropic and a few new pores with dozens of nanometers are formed due to thermal stress effect. After calcination at 1100 °C, the mesopores structure of all the samples collapse completely and some tetragonal zirconia can be also detected in the sample with high zirconium content (15 ≤ Si/Zr ≤ 40). The synthesized Zr-MCM-41 materials with good thermal stability are expected to be used as the support of catalytic activators under process conditions.