Structural analysis of amorphous silica prepared by water glass-based precursors and its thermal, spectral characterization

Abstract The chemico–physical properties, near infrared and TG-DTA behavior of the non-crystalline silica prepared by water glass with different initial concentrations were systematically investigated. The structural parameters obtained by X-ray diffraction technique showed that the short range order was no more than 5–6 atoms. The variations of calculated co-ordination number and Si–O bond length, which to some extent reflected the structural compactness, explained the variation of the measured oil absorption well.