A facile polybasic acid-template sol-gel route to synthesis regular shape silica nanoparticles

M. R. Eltohamy, National Research Center, Dokki, Egypt

Synthesis of tailored shape and size silica nanoparticles has received increasing theoretical and practical interest in the past few years. This work presents an ultrasonic-assisted template-based sol-gel route that can be employed in the fabrication of silica powders having an average particle size of less than 100 nm and reasonable dispersion. A polybasic organic acid was introduced to interfere in the TEOS hydrolysis stage and control the size and shape of the produced silica particles where the acid may have formed templates on the surface of the amorphous hydrous silica colloid. Thermal analysis show that the technique used could get rid of most of the polybasic acid remainders even before centrifuge and drying. X-ray diffractograms show amorphous silica products. Rather than the irregular-size spherical shapes that can be obtained through the normal base-mediation route or the micro-size agglomerated particles obtained through the acid hydrolysis route, TEM images in this study show that the product particles are of uniform and regular nano-shapes in the form of plates or cubes.

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