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Morphology control of nickel nanoparticles prepared in situ within silica aerogels produced by novel ambient pressure drying

Lu, Jialu; Wang, Jiabin; Hassan, Khalil T.; Talmantaite, Alina; Xiao, Zhengguang; Hunt, Michael R.C.; Šiller, Lidija

Morphology control of nickel nanoparticles prepared in situ within silica aerogels produced by novel ambient pressure drying Thumbnail


Authors

Jialu Lu

Jiabin Wang

Khalil T. Hassan

Alina Talmantaite

Zhengguang Xiao

Lidija Šiller



Abstract

Silica aerogels are low density solids with high surface area and high porosity which are ideal supports for catalyst materials. The main challenge in aerogel production is the drying process, which must remove liquid from the pores of the wet gel while maintaining the solid network. In this work, the synthesis of silica aerogels and nickel-doped silica aerogels by a low energy budget process is demonstrated. Silica aerogels are produced by ambient drying using ammonium bicarbonate, rather than a conventional low surface tension solvent. Heating dissociates the ammonium bicarbonate, so generating CO2 and NH3 within the pores of the wet gel which prevents pore collapse during drying. Nickel-doped aerogels were produced by reducing nickel ions within pre-synthesised silica aerogels. The morphology of the resulting nickel particles—spheres, wires and chains—could be controlled through an appropriate choice of synthesis conditions. Materials were characterized using nitrogen adsorption/desorption isotherms, scanning electron microscopy, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis and X-ray diffraction. The surface area of undoped aerogel is found to increase with the concentration of ammonium bicarbonate salts from 360 to 530 m2 g−1, and that of nickel-doped silica aerogel varies from 240 to 310 m2 g−1 with nickel doping conditions.

Citation

Lu, J., Wang, J., Hassan, K. T., Talmantaite, A., Xiao, Z., Hunt, M. R., & Šiller, L. (2020). Morphology control of nickel nanoparticles prepared in situ within silica aerogels produced by novel ambient pressure drying. Scientific Reports, 10(1), Article 11743. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-68510-4

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jun 2, 2020
Online Publication Date Jul 16, 2020
Publication Date 2020
Deposit Date Jul 24, 2020
Publicly Available Date Jul 24, 2020
Journal Scientific Reports
Publisher Nature Research
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 10
Issue 1
Article Number 11743
DOI https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-68510-4

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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.





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