Synthesis of easily shaped ordered mesoporous titanium-containing silica

A synthesis for easily shaped Ti-containing mesoporous silicates has been reported, which uses as-prepared mesoporous silica SBA-15 as a host template, an inorganic titanium salt (such as TiCl3 or TiOSO4) as a titanium source and water as a solvent. The synthesis involves three steps: obtaining as-prepared mesostructured silicate, grafting functional moieties, and thermal treatment, which is feasible in industry. The as-prepared titanium-containing mesostructured silicates can be easily shaped. XRD, N2 sorption isotherms, TEM, FT-IR and UV-vis techniques reveal that Ti-containing mesoporous silicates after calcination have the highly ordered 2-D hexagonal mesostructure, high surface areas (475–837 m2/g), large pore volumes (0.56–0.92 cm3/g), uniform pore sizes (6.4–7.3 nm), and tetrahedrally incorporated titanium species in silica frameworks. The titanium source has a great influence on grafting.