Synthesis and Characterization of Mesoprous silica clay by bentonite

Nano-holes are a regular part of organic or inorganic porous structure jointly with pore sizes ranging from 1×10^-7 - 2×10^-9. Nano-holes are especially useful in filtration. Nanoporous materials by IUPAC are divided into three categories: Micro porous materials: 0.2 – 2 nm, Meso porous materials: 2 – 50 nm, Macro porous materials: 50 – 100 nm. Silica based mesoporous materials have attracted the attention of material scientists due to their high surface area. They have different applications such as adsorbents, separation process, heterogeneous catalysts, host guest chemistry, separation of large biological molecules, environmental pollution control etc. Silica based materials structures have been synthesized by making use of several sources of silica, such as silicon alkoxides (e.g., TEOS, TMOS), sodium silicate, Ludox, fumed silica, water glass etc [1-3]. bentonite, one kind of widely used clay mineral, is composed with silicate layers[4]. In this study silica based material has been synthesized from natural bentonite.