Morphology control of ordered supermicroporous silicas

Abstract A feasible method has been developed for the morphology control of ordered supermicroporous silicas by adopting a kind of rosin-based surfactant as the templating agent. By adjusting the molar ratio of sodium silicate (SS) and ethyl acetate (EA), the morphologies of the materials can be changed from hollow sphere to hollow tube, and solid rod, while the degree of ordering of the samples showed a trend of firstly increasing and then decreasing. When the molar ratio of SS/EA was 0.38, an ordered supermicroporous silica with a hollow tubular morphology was obtained. The material had a surface area of 645.5 m 2 /g, a pore volume of 0.3 cm 3 /g, and a pore size distribution centered at 1.8 nm. When the molar ratio of SS/EA was increased to 0.46, the resulting sample exhibited a solid-rod morphology with a highly ordered hexagonal supermicroporous structure. This material had a large surface area of 1478.1 m 2 /g, a high pore volume of 0.7 cm 3 /g, and a uniform pore size distribution centered at 2.0 nm.