Surfactant-template Synthesis of Mesoporous Silica Monolith via Fast Sol-gel Process

Surfactant-template synthesis of mesoporous silica monolith was carried out via modified fast sol-gel process. It was easy to obtain crack-free silica monolith due to low volume shrinkage during the gelation. The morphology of the titled silica was characterized by transmission electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction. The results showed that the pores were worm-like and the pore size was about 4 nm. Further nitrogen isothermal absorption experiment indicated that the specific area of the titled material was 391 m2/g, which was comparable with the reported value 306 m2/g in literature.