Using Swellable Polymers as Structure Directing Scaffolds in Mesoporous Titania Synthesis

Abstract

This paper presents a novel synthesis of well characterized nanoporous materials. The development of mesoporous TiO2 with the use of crosslinked polymer network as structure and surface texture directing agent is reported in this study. Randomly cross-linked DMAEMA-50-PEGMA-50-EGDMA1 was synthesized by radical polymerisation to be used as removable scaffold. The resulting materials were characterized by powder X-ray diffraction (pXRD), nitrogen adsorption, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). The synthesized oxides morphology was strongly influenced by the polymer network used as removable scaffold. The modified materials exhibited a narrower pore size distribution and marginally higher specific surface area compared to the unmodified samples. The scaffold cross-linking ratio was also found to have a significant effect on the synthesized materials polymorph. The modification has a strong effect on the titania polymorph as the anatase-rutile transformation was observed only for the modified titania samples.