Facile Preparation of Porous Inorganic SiO2 Nanofibrous Membrane by Electrospinning Method

We presented a straightforward method to fabricate porous inorganic SiO2 nanofibrous membrane by one-step calcination of electrospun nanofibers, which encapsulated with carbon nanospheres as template for nanopore generation. The structure, morphology, and composition of the as-spun fibers (PVA/SiO2/C) and porous SiO2 were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The detective results indicated that the carbon nanospheres were uniformly encapsulated inside the PVA/SiO2/C nanofibers. After calcination, PVA polymer was removed and high flexible inorganic nanofibrous membrane composed of amorphous SiO2 was obtained. Simultaneously, carbon nanosphere template was decomposed and uniform nanopores were generated inside the SiO2 nanofibers. This new method is simple and of low cost and hence is suitable to prepare other porous inorganic nanofibers with high surface area for practical application.