Influence of solvent on preparation of silica nanosphere

Department of Chemistry, Anna University, Chennai-600 025, India
E-mail : venkatathrin@yahoo.com
Manuscript received 14 November 2007, revised 5 May 2008, accepted 16 July 2008

Normally silica nanospheres were synthesized using ethanol as solvent. The draw back in this method is the
result of non-uniform particle size. Octadecyltrimethoxy silane was used to normalize it. As it is costly, there is need
for alternative method. Here in this communication we changed the solvent to acetone, isoporopanol, n-octanol, etc.
We succeed in getting a monotype nano silica particle when we used these three solvents. Even though the experiment
is simple, the impact is more. It is found that the density of the solvent plays an important role in particle growth.
There is an optimum value of density, above or below which precipitate was not produced.