Hollow mesoporous silica materials with well-ordered cubic Ia3d mesostructured shell for toluene adsorption

In this work, hollow mesoporous silica samples (HMSs) with uniform diameter (≈ 400 nm), high specific surface area (1138–1742 m²/g) and stable structure were successfully synthesized. The shell of synthesized HMSs displays the well-ordered cubic Ia3d mesostructure with uniform mesopores of ca. 2.7 nm, and the shell thickness is easily adjusted in range from 30 to 80 nm. More importantly, the potential applications of HMSs are further demonstrated for adsorption capacity, toluene as the model molecule. HMSs exhibit remarkably higher adsorption capacity, especially HMS-3. The saturated adsorption amount toward toluene of HMS-3 can reach as high as 5.93 mmol/g that is almost two times larger than that of MCM-48 (2.74 mmol/g). In addition, Henry constants and adsorption kinetics date on HMS-3 and MCM-48 for toluene were also evaluated in detail. By a contrastive analysis, the good sorption capacity of HMS-3 for toluene could be ascribed to the unique interior voids and strong adsorption energy with each other.