A green process for the synthesis of controllable mesoporous silica materials

The synthesis, characterization, and application of mesoporous silicas have attracted a lot of attention for over two decades, which stems from their fascinating structures, formation mechanisms and prospects of their applications. Various methods have been developed for the synthesis of these silicas with a tunable pore diameter and a narrow pore size distribution. In this paper, mesoporous silica materials with controllable pore diameters (3-9 nm), narrow pore size distributions, high surface area (>700 m(2) g(-1)) and pore volume (>1 cm(3) g(-1)) were prepared by a green template, amphiphilic dendritic polyamidoamine. The resulting silica materials were characterized by H-1, C-13 NMR spectroscopy; thermogravimetic analysis: nitrogen adsorption: transmission electron microscope. It was shown that the template could be completely removed and recycled from the silica in an environmentally friendly way by means of a simple water extraction. Furthermore, it was shown that the pore diameter of these materials could be controlled by dendritic polyamidoamine with different generations and functional groups. Meanwhile, the porous framework showed strong thermal stability. Thus, a new environmentally friendly pathway for the controllable synthesis of this fascinating silicas has been proposed. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.