N2 adsorption curve of mesoporous SiO2:: A neglected characterization technique

Mesoporous SiO2 sieve and SiO2 nanoparticles were synthesized by a traditional method in the presence and absence of tri-block copolymer surfactant P 123 as structure directed agent respectively. The characterization results show that the mesoporous SiO, sieve has larger specific area (789 m(2)/g) than SiO, nanoparticles (373 m(2)/g), and there exists a substantial difference in the N, adsorption curves between the two samples. A speculative scheme shows that the formation of bottleneck during the N-2 adsorption process of mesoporous SiO, sieve should be responsible for the phenomenon. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.