Surfactant-templated mesostructured materials from inorganic silica

Mesoporous silica materials made by the use of self-assembled surfactants as templates have attracted a lot of interest in recent years. The number of publications on the topic has increased by a factor of 100 between 1993 and 2003. The vast majority of the papers deal with syntheses from organosilicates, such as tetramethylorthosilicate. (TMOS) and tetraethylorthosilicate (TEOS), as the silica source. These alkoxides are convenient as a starting material but they are expensive and the products made from them can only find use in applications where price is not a major issue. This review summarizes the published work on the preparation of mesoporous silica from inorganic sources, such as water glass and silica sot, still using self-assembled surfactants as the template. The use of such raw materials instead of the organosilicates will radically change the production price of the products and may open up completely new fields of application. Much less work has been put into the synthesis of mesoporous silica from these starting materials and relatively little is known about the reaction mechanism. The current understanding is summarized and discussed and comparisons are made with the conventional route that originates from the organosilicates.