Intern: Tristan
Research Mentor: Mark
Faculty Sponsor: Galen Stucky
Project Title: Synthesis and Characterization of Mesoporous Materials
I am a Molecular Biology major, but I had the opportunity to work in the
Chemistry Depatment at UCSB for the Materials Research Laboratory. The MRL
is a NSF funded program and encompasses a wide variety of projects, from
semiconductor research to biomineralization. My project was the synthesis
and characterization of a new family of materials called mesopores. Mesopores
are simiIar to zeolites in that they are both made of silica and both become
catalytically active when metal is incorporated into the silica framework.
The mesopore I worked with was MCM48, developed by Mobil Oil Corp. in 1992.
MCM48 has pore diameters of 20 to 30 angstroms, as opposed to the 2 to 12
angstrom pores of zeolites. Also, MCM48 has anywhere from 1,200 to 1,400
square meters of surface area per gram and has a pore volume of approximately
1.2 cubic centimeters per gram. Zeolites, on the other hand, have only about
800 square meters of surface area. MCM48 may become an industrially useful
material someday because by incorporating molybdenum, tungsten, vanadium,
zirconium, or titanium into the framework, MCM48 will be able to break long
hydrocarbons into shorter hydrocarbons. My project entailed synthesizing
MCM48 with molybdenum, tungsten, or vanadium in the framework, and then
characterizing the substance to see if the metal was in the framework of
silica and if the mesopore had remained crystalline. I was able to successfully
incorporate tungsten and vanadium, but my molybdenum structures were failures.
In the future, experiments will probe the highest concentrations of metal
that can be put into the framework and to measure the effectiveness of Mo-,
W-, and V-MCM48 as a catalyst.
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