Sonochemistry as a tool for preparation of porous metal oxides*
D. N. Srivastava, N. Perkas, A. Zaban, and A. Gedanken**
Department of Chemistry, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan-52900,
Israel
Abstract: The porous metal oxides are an important class of
materials, because the surface area/volume ratio of a material is increased
by many fold, making them very useful in surface-related applications.
The mesoporous materials were discovered in the 1990s, and since then
they have been excellent candidates for materials science research.
These mesoporous materials are prepared by hydrolyzing the inorganic
precursor (usually metal alkoxide) in an acid, basic, or neutral medium
in the presence of an organic structure-directing agent, the surfactant,
in a conventional method. Recently, we have demonstrated that the sonochemical
technique can be employed for the synthesis of mesoporous metal oxides.
The sonochemical method reduced the time period required for such synthesis
by many fold, and also produced more stable structures. We got excellent
results with silica, titania, yittria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ), and
Fe2O3. We also used an inorganic precursor other than an alkoxide for
the preparation of mesoporous metal oxides. In this article, we present
some of the recent results on this topic.
* Special Topic Issue on the Theme
of Nanostructured Advanced Materials
**Corresponding author
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