A green chemistry approach to synthesize CTAB templated silica xerogels from sodium silicate

The role of chemistry in attaining sustainable development is not usually considered in a positive way. generally chemistry,chemists and chemicals are taken as causes of the problem. the green chemistry revolution is providing quite a number of challenges to those who practise chemistry in industry,education and research. other than these challenges,however,there is an equal number of opportunities to discover and apply new chemistry,to improve the economics of chemical manufacturing and to enhance the much-tarnished image of chemistry. based on the principles of green chemistry,a green chemistry (gc) approach is used to synthesize silica xerogels from an inexpensive precursor through a cost effective way. the process was catalyzed using an alkaline catalyst. a cationic surfactant hexadecyl trimethyl ammonium bromide (ctab) was used as the structure template. scanning electron microscopy (sem) of the templated silica displayed the presence of mesoporous silica particles having almost homogeneous size distribution. thermogravimetric analysis of the uncalcined samples helped to measure the ctab content in the uncalcined gel. tga,ftir and xrd analysis of the calcined samples confirmed the complete removal of ctab from the template.