Morphology-transport relationships for SBA-15 and KIT-6 ordered mesoporous silicas.

Quantitative morphology–transport relationships are derived for ordered mesoporous silicas through direct numerical simulation of hindered diffusion in realistic geometrical models of the pore space obtained from physical reconstruction by electron tomography. We monitor accessible porosity and effective diffusion coefficients resulting from steric and hydrodynamic interactions between passive tracers and the pore space confinement as a function of λ = dtracer/dmeso (ratio of tracer diameter to mean mesopore diameter) in SBA-15 (dmeso = 9.1 nm) and KIT-6 (dmeso = 10.5 nm) silica samples. For λ = 0, the pointlike tracers reproduce the true diffusive tortuosities. For 0 ≤ λ 0.3, because the larger pores carry most of the diffusive flux and keep pathways open when smaller pores have closed off.