Surfactant Templated Silica Xerogels as Adsorbents for Rhodamine 6G

A series of silica xerogels was synthesized by using TEOS as the silica precursor and a non ionic surfactant Triton X100 (TX100) and a cationic surfactant Hexadecyltrimethylammonium Bromide (CTAB) as templates. The xerogels were synthesized through 2-way catalysis using ultrasonic radiations for homogeneous mixing of the precursors and template. The surfactant template was later removed through calcination at 550 o C. It was found out that gels having CTAB as the template had higher surface area (612.08 m 2 /g) than the gels templated by TX100 (539.6 m 2 /g). High surface area xerogels were used in adsorption experiments for aqueous solutions of Rhodamine 6G (R6G). UV visible spectroscopy was used to find out the concentrations of dye solutions. The adsorption data of both the types of xerogels was found to follow Freundlich’s adsorption model pointing towards the possibility of adsorption of the dye molecules on the heterogeneous surface of the adsorbent.