Probing the microporous nature of hierarchically templated mesoporous silica via positron annihilation spectroscopy

Abstract

The technique of positron annihilation lifetime spectroscopy (PALS) in conjunction with standard nitrogen sorption techniques is used to probe the micropores present in microemulsion templated mesocellular foam (MCF) silica materials and hybrid MCF silica materials formed via a post synthesis functionalisation with (3-aminopropyl)triethoxysilane (APTES). For the MCF silica materials, the PALS results show that the number of micropores present decreases as the synthesis aging temperature is increased, which follows the trend seen in the micropore volumes determined from nitrogen sorption t-plot analysis. The presence of the micropores and the trend seen in the micropore volumes with increasin..