Facile fabrication of magnetic mesoporous silicavia multifunctional surfactantself-assembly and oxidation

Abstract

A type of multifunctional surfactant with a terminal ferrocene moiety was designed and used as a structure-directing agent and iron precursor to fabricate magnetic mesoporous silica by their self-assembly and oxidation in a single reaction system. The magnetic mesoporous silica was characterized by TEM, SEM, FT-IR, X-ray diffraction, N₂ adsorption–desorption isotherms, X-ray photoelectron spectrometry, X-ray fluorescence spectrometry and SQUID magnetometry. A mid-range temperature (300 °C) was considered to be a favourable oxidation reaction condition. The magnetic materials have a surface area of 880 m² g⁻¹, a pore size of 2.28 nm and a saturation magnetization of 1.83 emu g⁻¹. The obtained highly active material was also found to have an ideal adsorptive and catalytic ability to remove several dyes from water under visible light irradiation. The removal rate of the dyes reached 100% (methylene blue) and 99% (rhodamine B). This catalyst could easily be separated and recycled many times without the loss of activity. These results suggest that the preparation procedure of magnetic mesoporous silica is accessible and controllable, which may greatly promote the application of magnetic mesoporous silica in different fields.