Synthesis of mesoporous silica materials with hydroxyacetic acidd derivatives as templates via a sol-gel process

A series of mesoporous silica materials were synthesized via HCl-catalyzed solgel process of tetracthyl orthosilicate at 60 degreesC in the presence of nonsurfactant compounds such as hydroxyacetic acid (HA), lactic acid (LAC), 2-hydroxyisobutyric acid (HIBA) and diphenylglycolic acid (DPGA) as templates or poreforming agents, After the removal of the nonsurfactant template compounds from the template-containing SiO2 composite, mesoporous silica materials were obtained. Results from Brunauer-Emmett Teller (BET), powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) experiments identified the formation of mesopores. Nitrogen adsorption-desorption isotherms showed that pare parameters increased with the template concentration except for the DPGA system. However, the pole parameters did not simply increase with the size of the template molecules. These results revealed that the molecular structure, molecular affinity, number of hydrophobic groups and steric hindrance played a significant role on the pore size of the final materials.Polymer ScienceSCI(E)14ARTICLE3103-1131