Novel pathways for the preparation of mesoporous MCM-41 materials: control of porosity and morphology

Two novel synthesis routes for the preparation of mesoporous MCM-41 materials are introduced. Both methods use tetra-n-alkoxysilanes such as tetraethoxysilane (TEOS) or tetra-n-propoxysilane (TPS) as a silica source which are added to an aqueous solution of a cationic surfactant in the presence of ammonia as catalyst. In this study, n-alkyltrimethylammonium bromides and n-alkylpyridinium chlorides were employed as templates. The addition of an alcohol (e.g. ethanol or isopropanol) leads to a homogeneous system which allows the formation of spherical MCM-41 particles. The main advantages of these methods are short reaction times, excellent reproducibility and easy preparation of large batche…

A Novel Pathway for Synthesis of Submicrometer-Size Solid Core/Mesoporous Shell Silica Spheres

Novel route in the synthesis of MCM-41 containing framework aluminum and its characterization

Abstract Mesoporous molecular sieve MCM-41 with incorporated structural aluminum (Al-MCM-41) was prepared by hydrolysis of a solution of tetraethoxysilane and aluminum isopropoxide in the presence of ammonia as a catalyst. This method provides Al-MCM-41 of different Si/Al ratios from 13 to 297 corresponding to 0.3–7 mol% Al within an hour. X-ray diffraction and nitrogen adsorption measurements showed that the Al-MCM-41 prepared by this method had a highly ordered structure of pore arrays. Most Al atoms in these samples were incorporated tetrahedrally in the MCM-41 structure, which gave rise to cationic sites in the framework.