New nanoporous carbons with extremely high mesopore volumes and surface areas were obtained using mesoporous silica with a 3-D wormhole porous framework as templates. Mesoporous silica was synthesized following the literature described methods. Polystyrene sulfonic acid-based organic salts were used as carbon precursors. To evaluate the effect of sodium on porosity development silica matrices w...

Introduction Advanced applications often require carbons with high surface area and hierarchical porous structures. In response to this demand some efforts have been undertaken to create materials, which effectively combine the properties of both activated carbons (high surface area) and ordered mesoporous carbons (tunable and well-developed porosity). While there are activation methods, which ...

Bacterial α-amylase was immobilized in sol-gel matrices using different techniques and precursors (i.e. tetraethoxysilane and methyltriethoxysilane). Sol-gel entrapment procedures were adjusted to enhance the immobilized enzyme activity and the textural properties of the silica matrices. The addition of a template agent, the variation of aging and drying conditions or the gelation performed in ...

The temperature dependence of o-Ps lifetime in the pores calculated from extended Tao–Eldrup model was compared to the experimental data, collected for a set of silica gels synthesized using the polymer template technique. For the sample with average pore radii 2.0 nm rather good agreement between the model and experiment was found. For the sample with narrow pores (near 1.0 nm) the lifetime sp...

We present a confocal microscopy study of 1.55 microm monodisperse silica hard spheres as they sediment and crystallize at the bottom wall of a container. If the particles sediment onto a feature less flat wall, the two bottom layers crystallize simultaneously and layerwise growth follows. If the wall is replaced by a hexagonal template, only layerwise growth occurs. Our results complement earl...

A simple biotemplating method for the synthesis of silica (SiO2) and titania (TiO2) nanowires was designed on a fibrillar protein (alpha-synuclein) template. The diameter of SiO2 and TiO2 nanowires could be varied, between 20-100 nm, by varying the processing conditions. The nanowires were characterized by energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) and electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS). Due to...

Porous Carbon Nanoparticles (PCNs) with well-developed microporosity were obtained from bio-waste oil palm leaves (OPL) using single step pyrolysis in nitrogen atmosphere at 500-600 °C in tube-furnace without any catalysis support. The key approach was using silica (SiO2) bodies of OPL as a template in the synthesis of microporous carbon nanoparticles with very small particle sizes of 35-85 nm ...