Premium
A Preliminary Study on the Synthesis of Nano‐Sized Quartz
Author(s) -
Li LiJun,
Fang JiannNeng,
Lo HuannJih,
Song ShengRong,
Chen YawLin,
Chen HueiFen,
Lin IChieh
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
journal of the chinese chemical society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.329
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 2192-6549
pISSN - 0009-4536
DOI - 10.1002/jccs.200300059
Subject(s) - quartz , chemistry , nucleation , nano , cristobalite , population , chemical engineering , mineralogy , analytical chemistry (journal) , nanotechnology , chromatography , composite material , organic chemistry , materials science , demography , sociology , engineering
Silica gel was used as the starting material to synthesize nano‐sized quartz in the presence of alkaline solution. The experiments were carried out in autoclaves under the conditions of 0.25 M NaOH solution, 210 °C, and vapor pressure. SiO 2 ‐X 2 and α‐cristobalite appear as the intermediate unstable phases during the synthesis of quartz which occurs as a single stable phase in the synthetic product after 26 hour experiments. The growth of quartz can be separated into a fast linear growth with the rate of 75.3 nm/hr and a slow one with the rate of 1.4 nm/hr. It is shown that quartz begins to grow at 16.1 hours and the fast growth changes abruptly to the slow one at about 26.7 hours after the start of the experiments. On the other hand, nucleation occurs from 20 to 28 hours. For the synthetic quartz, an amount of about 32% of the population is nano‐sized, but most of the population (about 78%) lies between 50 nm and 300 nm, and the geometric mean size is about 182 nm. From the results of this preliminary study, it is encouraging that a high percentage of nano‐sized quartz could possibly be produced if suitable experimental conditions are chosen.