Study of the Influence of Microwave on the preparation of Sol-Gel

Abstract

In materials science, the sol-gel process is a method by which monomers are converted into a colloidal solution known as sol, which acts as the precursor for an integrated network of polymers or discrete particles. Typically, metal alkoxides (MOR) are commonly used as precursor. Sol-gel technique comprises various steps starting with the preparation of a sol containing a precursor followed by aging and deposition of the sol on a suitable support, then evaporation of the solvent and volatile components, finally heat treatment results in pyrolysis of the remaining organics and densification of the sol-gel takes place. Due to the pollutants such as heavy metals, dyes, emerging organic pollutants and others, which result in a bad quality of drinking water and aquatic ecosystems, leading to serious health and environmental problems, water purification or decontamination became of utmost importance. The conventional adsorbents used for water treatment still suffer from lack of efficiency, especially for some of the toxic and non-biodegradable pollutants. Therefore, there is a great need to find adsorbent materials that can improve the efficiency and meanwhile can be synthesized in a simple procedure. However, in order to achieve sol-gel glasses to be efficient in water treatment, different factors were studied and the adsorbent efficiency have been measured and compared. The factors are: