Synthesis of ZrO2–SiO2 mixed oxide by alcohol-aqueous heating method

Abstract

The preparation of ZrO2–SiO2 mixed oxide has been carried out simply by heating an alcohol-aqueous mixture. Preparation conditions such as volume ratio of alcohol to water and prehydrolysis time of tetraethoxysilane had more important effect on the homogeneity of mixed oxide. A self-catalytic effect on the resultant Zr–O–Si formation is observed. By employing FT-IR, XRD, NH3-TPD and pyridine adsorption FT-IR techniques, the mixing homogeneity of the mixed oxides in terms of the amount of Zr–O–Si hetero-linkages has been investigated in detail. The results indicate that the amount of Zr–O–Si hetero-linkages increases with the increase of ZrO2 content in mixed oxides. Moreover, the phase segregation and acidity generation of mixed oxides are studied and factors responsible for good mixing are also discussed. Using this approach, a series of highly homogeneous mixed oxides with ZrO2 content of 20–70 mol% are obtained at the optimized preparation condition.