Effect of temperature and calcination time in the characterizations of MCM-41

Abstract

The mesoporous silica particle, MCM-41 has received much attention because of its ease to synthesize and its vast applications as adsorbents and in catalytic reactions. The temperature used was changed from 28°C to 100°C during the synthesis of MCM-41 and it was found that the dissolution time is dependen on the temperature. The duration of calcination process also plays an important part in the crystallinity of MCM-41. MCM-41 was produced using Ludox HS-40 as the silica source and cetytrimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB) as the organic template. The solutions were easily dissolved at 100°C while gradually difficult at 80°C, 60°C, 40°C and lastly 28%C which needed the longest time to dissolve the organic template solution. The MCM-41 was characterized using XRay diffraction (XRD) and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR). XRD results showed that the calcination process has some effects on the crystallinity of the MCM-41. Crystallization of MCM-41 also depends on the aging time and prolonged aging time would yield products with high degree of crystallinity. The longer the calcinations process the lesser the residual organic template will remain leading to a higher degree of crystallinity.