Santa Barbara Amorphous-15

[1] This material proved important for scientists in various fields such as material sciences,[2] drug delivery,[3] catalysis,[4] fuel cells[5] and many other due to its desirable properties and ease of production.

The procedure is a typical Liquid-Crystal templating that consists of three steps: The interest in SBA-15 comes from the fact that its mostly mesopoures – meaning the pores are in the range of 2 nm to 50 nm according to the IUPAC definition[8] and the fact that these pores have a well defined structure that is cylindrical shape in hexagonal ordering with their relatively thick pore walls which gives thermal stability.

[9] The sorption isotherms of these materials, demonstrate typical hysteric behavior, which is still under discussion for its causes.

The small-angle X-ray scattering pattern shows typical Bragg peaks to the hexagonal structure of the material.

The peak positions, is directly related to the lattice parameter.