Mesoporous silicates are

silicate In chemistry, a silicate is any member of a family of polyatomic anions consisting of silicon and oxygen, usually with the general formula , where . The family includes orthosilicate (), metasilicate (), and pyrosilicate (, ). The name is al ...

s with a special

morphology Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to: Disciplines * Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts * Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies ...

Background

Porous inorganic solids have found great utility as

catalysts Catalysis () is the process of increasing the rate of a chemical reaction by adding a substance known as a catalyst (). Catalysts are not consumed in the reaction and remain unchanged after it. If the reaction is rapid and the catalyst recyc ...

and sorption media because of their large internal

surface area The surface area of a solid object is a measure of the total area that the surface of the object occupies. The mathematical definition of surface area in the presence of curved surfaces is considerably more involved than the definition of arc ...

, i.e. the presence of voids of controllable dimensions at the atomic, molecular, and nanometer scales. With increasing environmental concerns worldwide,

nanoporous Nanoporous materials consist of a regular organic or inorganic bulk phase in which a porous structure is present. Nanoporous materials exhibit pore diameters that are most appropriately quantified using units of nanometers. The diameter of pores i ...

materials have become more important and useful for the separation of polluting species and the recovery of useful ones. In recent years there has been great progress in applying environmentally friendly

zeolites Zeolites are microporous, crystalline aluminosilicate materials commonly used as commercial adsorbents and catalysts. They mainly consist of silicon, aluminium, oxygen, and have the general formula ･y where is either a metal ion or H+. These pos ...

in heterogeneous reaction

catalysis Catalysis () is the process of increasing the rate of a chemical reaction by adding a substance known as a catalyst (). Catalysts are not consumed in the reaction and remain unchanged after it. If the reaction is rapid and the catalyst recyc ...

. The reason for their success is related to their specific features in converting molecules having

kinetic diameter Kinetic diameter is a measure applied to atoms and molecules that expresses the likelihood that a molecule in a gas will collide with another molecule. It is an indication of the size of the molecule as a target. The kinetic diameter is not the sa ...

below 1 nm, but they become inadequate when reactants with sizes above the dimensions of the pores have to be processed. Research efforts to synthesize zeolites with larger pore diameter, high structural stability and catalytic activity have not given the expected results yet.

Characteristics

The discovery of a new family of

mesoporous A mesoporous material (or super nanoporous ) is a nanoporous material containing pores with diameters between 2 and 50 nm, according to IUPAC nomenclature. For comparison, IUPAC defines microporous material as a material having pores smaller ...

molecular sieve A molecular sieve is a material with pores (very small holes) of uniform size. These pore diameters are similar in size to small molecules, and thus large molecules cannot enter or be adsorbed, while smaller molecules can. As a mixture of molecu ...

s in the early 1990s by Kuroda et al., known as KSW-1 and FSM-16, and by

ExxonMobil ExxonMobil Corporation (commonly shortened to Exxon) is an American multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered in Irving, Texas. It is the largest direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, and was formed on November 30, ...

, called M41S,Kresge, C. T.; Leonowicz, M. E.; Roth, W. J.; Vartuli J.C.; Beck J. S. ''Nature'', 1992, 359, 710. opened new possibilities to prepare catalysts for reactions of relatively large molecules. The

wall of the pores is

amorphous In condensed matter physics and materials science, an amorphous solid (or non-crystalline solid, glassy solid) is a solid that lacks the long-range order that is characteristic of a crystal. Etymology The term comes from the Greek ''a'' ("wi ...

. Mesoporous silicates, such as MCM-41 and SBA-15 (the most common mesoporous silicates), are porous silicates with huge surface areas (normally ≥1000 m²/g), large pore sizes (2 nm ≤ size ≤ 20 nm) and ordered arrays of cylindrical mesopores with very regular pore morphology. The large surface areas of these solids increase the probability that a reactant molecule in solution will come into contact with the catalyst surface and react. The large pore size and ordered pore morphology allow one to be sure that the reactant molecules are small enough to diffuse into the pores.

Background

Characteristics

References

See also