Direct synthesis of homogeneous Zr-doped SBA-15 mesoporous silica via masking zirconium sulfate

Incorporating zirconium is one of the most widely applied method to functionalize the inert mesoporous silica. However, the conventional zirconium precursors are are costly and poisonous, and zirconium distributes unevenly in Zr-SBA-15. Herein, a homogeneous Zr-doped SBA-15 material (Zr-SBA-15) has been synthesized by employing the low-cost and nontoxic zirconium sulfate as metal precursor. Furthermore, different coordinating ligands including cholamine, diethanol amine, triethanolamine, pentaerythritol, lactic acid and oxalic acid were used as masking agent to mask zirconium sulfate. The masking effects of coordinating ligands on zirconium sulfate were investigated in the synthesis of ZrSBA-15. It was found that the introduction of coordinating ligands has a remarkable masking effects on preventing the rapid hydrolysis of zirconium sulfate. The obtained Zr-SBA-15 shows an uniform zirconium dispersion (EDS mapping results) with outstanding texture property (S-BET of 806 m(2) g(-1), D-BJH of 6.6 nm and V-BJH of 0.99 cm(3) g(-1)). Computational simulations was performed for qualitative comparison of masking ability, and the validity of experimental results was theoretically confirmed as well. (C) 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.