Effect of Drying Processes on the Texture of Silica Gels.docVIP

Journal of Biomaterials and Nanobiotechnology, 2013, 4, 17-21 17 /10.4236/jbnb.2013.41003 Published Online January 2013 (/journal/jbnb) Effect of Drying Processes on the Texture of Silica Gels Hamid Satha 1* , Kamel Atamnia 1 , Florence Despetis 2 1 Laboratoire AIGM, Groupe Matériaux, Université 8 mai 1945, Guelma, Algérie; pellier II, Montpellier, France. 2 GES, UMR CNRS 5650, Université de Mont- Email: sathahamid@yahoo.fr * th Received September 14 , 2012; revised October 20 th th , 2012; accepted November 7 , 2012 ABSTRACT Peculiar xerogels and aerogels constituted by a silica network, made of spherical fully dense silica particles having the same size, are investigated by adsorption of nitrogen at 77.4 K. Comparison of sorption data between materials dried via different methods, gentle drying at room temperature, alcohol supercritical drying and CO supercritical drying, shows 2 that the specific surface area is associated to the particle sizes and necks established between them during drying and not to the sample density. The dissolution-redeposition of silica, which occurs in the alcohol supercritical drying pro- cess, induces a decrease of specific surface area and consequently an increase in the mechanical properties compara- tively to CO supercritical drying. Investigating pore volume measurements as a function of dwell time, which is the 2 interval of time allowing a pressure change of 0.01%, we corroborate that for compliant materials the full volume can not be detected because of capillary stresses. So the time required to perform correct measurements of the pore volume decreases with sample bulk density increase and elastic properties increase. All these experiments qualitatively cor- roborate the theory proposed previously. Keywords: Nitrogen Sorption; Pore Volume; Aerogel; Alcohol Supercritical Drying; CO Supercritical Drying