Effect of ball milling on the structural and textural features of MCM-41 mesoporous material

This paper reports on the ball-milling process and its influence on the structural, textural and morphological features of mesoporous MCM-41 material. MCM-41 and the as-milled products were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), N-2-adsorption, a field emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM) and a thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). The XRD showed that the mechanical treatment of MCM-41 in a ball mill leads to a gradual crystallinity loss with time until 2 h, and complete crystallinity loss was observed after 4 h of ball milling. N-2 sorption measurements revealed a sharp surface area decrease as well as mesoporosity loss accompanying the milling process. The FE-SEM investigation demonstrated severe damage of the spherical morphology of MCM-41 upon milling for 8 h. Moreover, it was found that these structural, textural and morphological changes strongly affected the water content of the milled MCM-41 material. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.