Synthesis of spherical microscale and nanoscale modified silica particles using spray-drying and spray-pyrolysis process

Abstract

In the present work, we prepared modified and unmodified microscale and nanoscale silica particles using spray-drying and the spray-pyrolysis process, respectively, which could be an alternative for the production of this kind of product in industrial scale. For it, modified Stöber method was used to synthetize the precursor solution including tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) and triethoxy(octyl)silane (ETOS) as precursors and 3-(Trimethoxysilyl)propyl methacrylate (γ-MPS) as template for the functionalization. The silica sol passed into both equipment to obtain the final powder. The surface morphology was investigated with Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), and the Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) was used to describe the functionalization of the final powder. SEM results show that we successfully synthetized spherical microscale and nanoscale particles with spray-drying and spray-pyrolysis process, respectively. The FT-IR analysis show the functionalization of the silica powder obtained with both technologies. It is possible to consider these technologies as a simple way to produce modified spherical silica particles in an industrial scale.