Periodic mesoporous materials synthesis

Periodic mesoporous materials synthesis, characterization and potential applications... 

Aprile, C., Abad, A., Garcia, H., and Corma, A. 2005. Synthesis and catalytic activity of periodic mesoporous materials incorporating gold nanoparticles. Journal of Materials Chemistry 15, 4408-4413. 

Yanagisawa et al. [6] described an alternative approach to periodic mesoporous materials with structural characteristics similar to those of MCM-41. They employed the natural mineral kanemite, a layered silicate, as a siUca source. The synthesis pathway involved the intercalation of long-chain (typically Cie) alkyltri-methylammonium cations into the layered silicate in an aqueous solution at 70 °C, followed by calcination to remove the organic species. In spite of the... 

Recently, there has been an increasing interest in the synthesis of ordered mesoporous carbons, since such materials are very promising as adsorbents, catalyst supports, and electrochemical double-layer capacitors. Ordered mesoporous silicas have been shown as suitable templates to prepare periodic mesoporous carbons with various pore shapes and connectivity. The synthesis procedure involves impregnation of the mesoporous silica with an appropriate carbon precursor, carbonization of carbon source, and subsequent removal of silica using an aqueous solution of HF or NaOH. ... 

The ordered mesoporous materials (or crystalline mesoporous materials) such as MCM-41 (MCM stands for Mobil composite of matter), MCM-48 and SBA-15 (SBA stands for University of California, Santa Barbara) are a new generation of materials that are different from nonordered (amorphous) mesoporous materials. They are amorphous and not ordered at the atomic level from a classical crystallographic view point, but their regular channels or pores are ordered at the nanometer level. Because of this, these materials have certain characteristics of crystalline solids. Their structural information can be obtained by diffraction methods and other structural analysis techniques. The discovery of periodic mesoporous structures is a major advance in composite organic-inorganic materials synthesis. 

Many of the non-silica compositions showed problems with the stability and quality of the structure. Efforts to address these issues have been on going and quite successful in some cases such as all-alumina compositions (see below). Silica-based materials remain dominant as the most versatile and best quality molecular sieves (structure and stability) available by a facile synthesis. These attributes, especially the convenient synthesis made mesoporous silicate attractive for post-synthesis functionalization with other elements as well as organic moieties with active groups/ccnters. Recently the compositional diversity has been extended further to include both silica and organic moieties within the framework. The new class is referred to as periodic mesoporous organosilicas (PMOs). The synthesis involves surfactant-assisted assembly by hydrolysis of organo-silicon compounds. Additional discussion of the PMOs is presented below. 

---