Effects of mesoporous silica addition on electrochemical properties of carbon electrode

Abstract

Mesoporous silica is material that possesses the pore sizes between 2 nm to 50 nm which had expanded their applications rapidly. In this study, mesoporous SBA-15 and SBA-16 were synthesized via surfactant templating approach using triblock copolymer as directing agent and tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) as silica source. The synthesized materials were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and nitrogen absorption-desorption tests. The pore diameters are 5.5 nm and 3.2 nm for SBA-15 and SBA-16 respectively, were determined with BJH method based on adsorption data. Three different electrodes were fabricated, carbon paste electron (CPE) and two modified carbon paste electrodes (MCPE): SBA-15/MPCE and SBA-16/MPCE. The fabricated electrodes were tested using cyclic voltammetry (CV) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). SBA-16/MCPE showed better adsorption, enhanced the response signal to 81% and a lower resistance (4.04KΩ). The synthesized mesoporous materials have the potential to be used in the development of high performance, lightweight and flexible devices in electrochemistry.