Structural analysis of amorphous silica prepared by water glass-based precursors and its thermal, spectral characterization

The chemico-physical properties, near infrared and TG-DTA behavior of the non-crystalline silica prepared by water glass with different initial concentrations were systematically investigated. The structural parameters obtained by X-ray diffraction technique showed that the short range order was no more than 5-6 atoms. The variations of calculated co-ordination number and Si-O bond length, which to some extent reflected the structural compactness, explained the variation of the measured oil absorption well. (C) 2009 Published by Elsevier B.V.