抄録
A silica aerogel has been successfully synthesized using a short-chain ionic liquid, 1-butyl-3-methyl-imidazolium-tetrafluoroborate, as the solvent and tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) as a precursor via an HCl-catalyzed sol-gel route. The molar ratio of ionic liquid to TEOS was controlled to be ca. 1.0. The sample drying proceeded through solvent extraction method with a vacuum to avoid the risky supercritical drying step. The prepared silica aerogel possessed a specific surface area of about 734 m2/g. Transmission electron microscopy and small-angle X-ray scattering analyses revealed that the prepared silica aerogel exhibited an open mass-fractal silica framework formed by the aggregation of the individual spherical silica particles. A two-level unified scattering function was adopted to fit the SAXS data to quantify the sizes of the mass-fractal clusters and their constituent silica particles.
