Silica-CTAB-Water Phase Diagram at 150 °C: Predicting Phase Structure by Artificial Neural Network

Abstract A silica mesophase diagram was explored via the synthesis of 31 samples using mixtures with the following compositions 1.0 SiO 2 : 0.317 TMAOH : x CTAB : y H 2 O with 0.042 ≤ x ≤0.67 and 21.7 ≤ y ≤ 298 . All samples were prepared at 150 °C for 40 h. Synthesis mixture compositions which afford hexagonal (MCM-41), cubic (MCM-48) and lamellar phases were delimited. In particular a relatively wide range of compositions were found to give rise for the first time to good quality MCM-48 without using polar additives. The artificial neural network approach was shown to be capable of predicting the structure of mesophases based on their TMAOH-CTAB-water composition.