Direct synthesis of Pore-Expanded-Hierarchical MCM-41 using auxiliary chemicals and carbon nanoparticles

Synthesis of hierarchical MCM-41 mesoporous silica with expanded mesopores (HPE-MCM-41) was investigated by using trimethylbenzene as auxiliary chemical coupled with colloidal crystal templating method. The BET method showed the resulted MCM-41 has average pore diameter of about 11 nm with acceptable pore size distribution in both macro and meso scale, and total pore volume of 2.62 cm 3 g-1, which were 3 times higher than those of conventional MCM-41. By using this method the obtained surface area was 934 m2g -1 which is decreased only 10% comparing to the ordinary MCM-41. The resulted material had pore distribution in 3 different ranges 2-8 nm, 8-20 nm and 80-200 nm

Keywords:

MCM-41 , trimethylbenzene , auxiliary chemicals , carbon nanoparticles , pore expansion , hierarchical structure