Silver-Loaded Xerogel Nanostructures for Iodine Capture: A Comparison of Thiolated versus Unthiolated Sorbents
Brian J. Riley, Saehwa Chong, José Marcial, Nabajit Lahiri, Mrinal K. Bera, Sungsik Lee, Tianpin Wu, Karen Kruska, Josef Matyáš
Abstract
This paper describes the development and provides comparisons of thiolated (−SH) and unthiolated Ag–Al–Si–O xerogels for iodine gas capture. These xerogels were produced from alkoxides and then heat-treated at 350 °C to provide mechanical strength for subsequent processing steps. Then, a portion of the xerogels was thiolated using (3-mercaptopropyl)trimethoxysilane. Next, thiolated and unthiolated batches were ion-exchanged in AgNO3 solutions where Ag+ replaced Na+ in the gel network on a near 1:1 molar basis. Subsamples of the Ag-exchanged xerogels were subjected to a reduction step in H2/Ar to convert Ag+ to Ag0 where the rest of the Ag-exchanged (Ag+) were not reduced. X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and transmission electron microscopy revealed nanoscale Ag0 in the Ag+ samples despite no active reduction where actively reduced samples had bimodal Ag0 distribution of ∼2–3 nm hexagonal and ∼6–7 nm cubic crystallites. Synchrotron X-ray absorption spectroscopy was used to assess the oxidization states of Ag, S, and I within the different xerogel samples. The specific surface areas of the base xerogels decreased as subsequent treatments were performed on the as-made samples, albeit the decreases were smaller than aerogel equivalents of these samples from a previous study. All iodine-loaded Ag-based samples showed a mixture of β-AgI and γ-AgI. Comparisons of iodine-loading results with other Ag-based iodine sorbents show that the thiolated Ag0-xerogels in this work have one of the highest iodine-loading capacities (qe) reported to date in saturated conditions with the thiolated Ag0-xerogel showing 522 mg iodine per g of the sorbent.