Preparation of tetraethoxysilane to obtain spherical silica particles. Part 1. Ultrafiltration

The paper considers the problem of instability of tetraethoxysilane hydrolysis in an ethanol medium in the presence of ammonia as a catalyst to obtain monodisperse spherical silica particles of a given size. This problem is associated with the presence of various impurities affecting rate of particle formation and, as a consequence, their size, monodispersity and shape. To solve this problem, we present novel studies of possible application of ultrafiltration for hydrolysis of initial tetraethoxysilane and ethanol through hydrophobic filters with a pore size of 50 nm. In both cases, we noted a decreasing intensity of light scattering after filtration. The elemental analysis of filtered impurities showed a significant content of SiO2 solid phases in tetraethoxysilane, and a number of impurities in ethanol. The experiments on the synthesis of silica particles from pre-filtered components showed that the resulting silica particles had a greater degree of monodispersity, and their sizes were much more reproducible, regardless of the used tetraethoxysilane. Thus, according to the obtained data, ultrafiltration is one of the effective ways to solve the problem of instability in the synthesis of monodisperse spherical silica particles.