Abstract
Large-mesopore silica films with a narrow pore size distribution and high porosity have been obtained by a sol–gel reaction of a silicon oxide precursor (TEOS) and using polystyrene-block-poly(ethylene oxide) (PS-b-PEO) copolymers as templates in an acidic environment. PS-b-PEO copolymers with different molecular weight and composition have been studied in order to assess the effects of the block length on the pore size of the templated silica films. The changes in the morphology of the porous systems have been investigated by transmission electron microscopy and a systematic analysis has been carried out, evidencing the dependence between the hydrophilic/hydrophobic ratio of the two polymer blocks and the size of the final silica pores. The obtained results prove that by tuning the PS/PEO ratio, the pore size of the templated silica films can be easily and finely predicted.
Highlights
Mesoporous materials with large, tunable porosity are currently being investigated as selective molecular sieves, finding potential applications in many fields such as catalysis, encapsulation of proteins, filtration and separation of large molecules, membrane technology, drug delivery, dosing, adsorption, sensing, among many others [1,2,3,4,5].Different approaches have been applied in order to obtain porous materials characterized by a controlled porous architecture
By fixing the TEOS/PSb-poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) weight ratio of the micellar solutions in order to get spherical micelles, we studied the effect of the PS/PEO ratio on the pore size of the templated silica films
Hybrid TEOS/block copolymer films obtained by spin-coating deposition of block copolymer micellar solutions were transformed into silica nanoporous thin layers by thermal treatment performed in air
Summary
Mesoporous materials with large, tunable porosity are currently being investigated as selective molecular sieves, finding potential applications in many fields such as catalysis, encapsulation of proteins, filtration and separation of large molecules, membrane technology, drug delivery, dosing, adsorption, sensing, among many others [1,2,3,4,5].Different approaches have been applied in order to obtain porous materials characterized by a controlled porous architecture. Large-mesopore silica films with a narrow pore size distribution and high porosity have been obtained by a sol–gel reaction of a silicon oxide precursor (TEOS) and using polystyrene-block-poly(ethylene oxide) (PS-b-PEO) copolymers as templates in an acidic environment. PS-b-PEO copolymers with different molecular weight and composition have been studied in order to assess the effects of the block length on the pore size of the templated silica films.
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