Isolation and Characterization of Fibrillar Nanosilica of Floral Origin: Cortaderia selloana Flowers as the Silica Source

Abstract

Herein we report a novel green chemical route by exploiting the vast and abundant flowers of Cortaderia selloana, known as 'pampass grass' for the isolation of nano silica fibers. To attain high-purity silica from these floras, leaching in hydrochloric acid of three varied normalities and running water treatment was conducted followed by air combustion. Highly pure, uniformly distributed fibrous (60-70 nm diameter) nanosilica was obtained when the acid concentration was 0.1 N, as optimized from Scanning electron microscopy and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy studies. Brunauer-Emmett-Teller surface area analysis summarized that the isolated silica is of specific surface area of 126 m 2 /g. The actual morphology of isolated silica was rich in nano fibrillar channel network as revealed from HR-TEM analysis. This cost effective eco-benign pathway opens a new vista for utilization of bio-precursors as nanosilica source.