Mesoporous silicalite-1 nanospheres and their properties of adsorption and hydrophobicity

Abstract The mesoporous silicalite-1 nanospheres (MSNs) had been successfully synthesized by using silicalite-1 seeds as silica source, cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) as the surfactant and diethyl ether as the cosolvent via a novel and facile approach, which had a structure analogous to HMS materials, but contained sillicalite-1 zeolite as the mesoporous wall. A variety of experimental techniques of transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and N 2 adsorption/desorption isotherms had been used to characterize the framework structure, porosity and morphology of this novel mesoporous silicalite-1 nanospheres. The obtained nanospheres had the diameters of 300–500 nm and possessed worm-like porous walls. The MSNs materials exhibited high surface areas and large total pore volumes, and the order of the mesoporous structures increased with the amount of the added cosolvent. Due to the complementary types of porous structures, MSNs materials were used to conduct the adsorption experiments under static and dynamic conditions. The equilibrium adsorptive experiments of toluene for MSNs samples presented a high adsorption capacity compared to the results reported by the other literatures. And the hydrophobicity index (HI) estimated by the dynamic adsorption process under wet conditions indicated that the MSNs materials possessed high dynamic adsorptive capacities and super-hydrophobic properties.