Effects of Non-Ionic Surfactants Poly(ethylene glycol) and Tritonx100 on the Preparation of SiO₂ Nanoparticles by Sol–Gel Process

SiO₂ nanomaterials were prepared from a TEOS precursor via an acid catalyzed sol–gel processing in water media with two amphiphilic templates: poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) and Triton X-100 (TX-100) separately. The resulting novel silica particles were characterized by several techniques. The effect of surfactants element manifests crystallite size as measured from X-ray diffraction (XRD), surface morphology from Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) for identification of material and impurities. The structures of particles obtained by a sol–gel technique were found to depend strongly on the use and type of additive molecules added. The results showed that, the prepared SiO₂ samples are amorphous in nature in powder form due to the boundaries diffuse to form discrete structures; whereas Silica/PEG powder particles are more angular and irregular in shape than Silica/TX-100. The surfactants suppress the growth of SiO₂ grains and agglomerate them. A surfactants-assisted sol–gel process shows an increase in intensity of diffraction peaks indicating an improvement in the crystallinity of the material. The chemical changes were found from the FTIR results, peaks were observed at 3429 cm^–1 and 3650 cm^–1 in PEG and TX-100 samples due to stretching and 1643 cm^–1 attributed to the bending vibrations of –OH groups.