Platinum Supported Mesoporous Silica Spheres by Optimized Microfluidic Sol-Gel Synthesis Scheme

Droplet based microfluidics is used to perform sol-gel reactions. The chemicals are dispensed, mixed, and pre-processed inside a microfluidic device allowing for long operation times without any clogging. Using this approach and optimizing all reaction and processing parameters we generate mesoporous silica particles with a very high surface area of 820 m²g⁻¹ and a narrow pore radius distribution of around 2.4 nm. To take full advantage of the possibilities offered by this microfluidic synthesis route, we produced platinum supported silica microspheres (as high as 7 mol. %) for heterogeneous catalysis.