Fast and low-temperature elimination of organic templates from SBA-15 using dielectric barrier discharge plasma

Organic templates P-123 of mesoporous SBA-15 can be effectively removed in a few minutes（4 min） by using the dielectric-barrier discharge（DBD） plasma technique at ambient pressure and low gas temperature（around 130 ℃）. The mesoporous SBA-15 was characterized by FT-IR,29Si solid sate NMR, TEM, XRD, TGA and N2 adsorption/desorption isotherms. The as-made SBA-15 treated with DBD plasma exhibited a larger surface area of 790 m2?·?g-1 with larger pores and microspore volume than samples prepared by using the conventional thermal calcination method(550℃ and 5 h, 660 m2?·?g-1). In addition to less shrinkage of the silica framework, the DBD-prepared SBA-15 showed significantly increased weight loss of 8.3%about 200 °C as compared with that of conventional calcination（5.5%）, which is attributed mainly to the dehydroxylation by condensation of silanol groups.