Influence of surfactant surface coverage and aging time on physical properties of silica nanoparticles

The experimental results on the influence of surfactant surface coverage and aging time on physical properties of silica nanoparticles were reported. The spherical silica nanoparticles have been synthesized using polyethylene glycol (PEG) as the surfactant and oil shale ash (OSA) as a new silica source. In order to identify the optimal condition for producing the best quality silica nanoparticles with the good dispersion and uniformity, the effects of surfactant surface coverage and aging time were investigated. It was found that the particle size and distribution of silica nanoparticles depend on the concentration of PEG in dispersion. At relatively low concentration, 0–2 wt.%, the existing PEG is not sufficient to prevent further growth of the initially formed silica nanoparticles, leading to large aggregates of silica particles. When the PEG concentration increases to 3 wt.%, self-assembled PEG layer on the surface stabilizes the initially formed silica nanoparticles and the silica particles with average diameter of 10 nm are uniformly distributed. With further increasing the concentration of PEG, the number of PEG aggregates increases and silica nanoparticles are mainly formed inside the entangled PEG chains, resulting in an observation of clusters of silica nanoparticles. Moreover, it was found that as the aging time increased, the shape of silica nanoparticles becomes regular and the particle size distribution becomes narrow.