Superacid sulfated-zirconia mesoporous carbon (szrmc) “efficient chemotherapeutic agent”.

Abstract

The goal of this work is the incorporation of zirco-nium, in the process of self-assembly of the tem-plate agents (P123) and hydrolyzed TEOS, and a source of carbon in the original synthesis mixture. This direct incorporation of zirconia leads, after carbonization, to ordered mesoporous carbon mate-rial, with zirconium in its structure (SZr-MC), and without zirconium oxide as a bulky species. The sulfated mesoporous carbon has a high acidity that can make the SZr-MC nanoscopic material, with super acidic properties. We have designed a novel synthesis procedure for the formation of acidic mesoporous carbon-based nanomaterials function-alized with sulfated zirconia. During the crystalliza-tion process, P123, A-type starch, zirconia and sili-con were able to cohesionize. After sulphuric treat-ments, the physical characteristics of the parent car-bon were retained in the ultimate material, reveal-ing a great surface area (1300 m2/g), a large pore volume and a well-ordered porosity composed of uniform mesopores of approximately 3.5 nm. XRD, SEM, TEM and XPS studies indicated the absence of ZrO2 as a bulk species. Therefore, Zr as an iso-lated species was successfully anchored in the MC for subsequent sulfation. Furthermore, evidence from the XPS C 1s data can be attributed to the sp2 hybridized carbon (from the graphitic structure of the mesoporous carbon), which would form Zr-C bonds. In addition, the large amount of -OH groups, coming from the starch used as carbon source, would promote the formation of Zr-O-C species (also detected by XPS), forming part of the MC walls, in the self-assembly process.The evidence of two high temperature desorption peaks in the NH3-TPD profile and the high pyridine retention temper-ature determined by FTIR revealed medium, strong and super-strong acid sites in the SZrMC, and it can be assumed that these sites correspond to a su-peracid nanomaterial.