AMORPHOUS SILICA MOLECULAR-SIEVING MEMBRANES BY SOL-GEL PROCESSING

Communication: Microporous ceramics and ceramic membranes have many po tential applications, for example, in the chemical, environmental, ene rgy conversion, and automotive industries. An organic template approac h using sol-gel processing is described by which microporous amorphous silica is synthesized. It is shown that the very narrow pore size dis tribution is comparable to that of the zeolite ZSM-5 and that the memb ranes have ideal gas separation factors at least two orders of magnitu de larger than those expected for a Knudsen diffusion separation mecha nism.