Talk:Stöber process

Lede

@Smokefoot: Hey I was just in the process of rewriting the lede section and when I was saving it I got edit conflict with your edits. Here is the less technical lede that I had created:

The Stöber process was initially discovered in 1968 by Werner Stöber et al. building on earlier work by G. Kolbe published in 1956. The process fabricates silica particles with easily controllable size and very little variability in the size. The particles are created by adding Tetraethyl orthosilicate in a low mass alcohol like ethanol and water along with a catalyst where it undergoes hydrolysis and condensation reactions. Originally the kinetics of the reaction were believed to follow a monomer addition model where single Tetraethyl orthosilicate were added to growing silica particles, however later research showed that a particle aggregation model, where small silica molecules fuse together to make larger particles, fits experimental data better. The chemical reaction produces silica particles with ranging from 50-2000 nanometers in diameter depending the ratios of chemicals added. Since the initial discovery in 1968, extensive research has been undertaken on the Stöber process, including but not limited to the development of a modified two-step process done at a low pH and that adds surfactant to the mixture. The surfactant gets incorporated into the particles and afterwards is burned out in a method called calcination, which results in silica particles with small pores, known as mesoporous silica. In addition to this several other additives to the reaction have been studied, resulting in several new silica variations including macroporous monoliths and shell-core particles.

I feel like the changes that you made to the lede makes it a bit too short and general and that it does not adequately summarize the what is covered in the article. We should work to combine what I created along with what you made to create a lead that better summarizes all the sections of the article. Also I do like the changes you made to the one-step process, they definitely make it more concise and easier to read, thanks for the contribution! --Imminent77 (talk) 14:44, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

Here is a combination of your edit with what I had wrote:

In materials science, the Stöber processis a method to produce monodisperse particles of silica initially discovered in 1968 by Werner Stöber et al. building on earlier PhD work by G. Kolbe. It is one type of sol-gel processing. The process involves hydrolysis and then condensation of a molecular precursor, typically tetraethylorthosilicate, in a low mass alcohol like ethanol. The reaction produces silica particles with ranging from 50-2000 nanometers in diameter depending the ratios of chemicals added. Since the initial discovery in 1968, extensive research has been undertaken on the Stöber process, including but not limited to the development of a modified two-step process done at a low pH and that adds surfactant to the mixture. The surfactant gets incorporated into the particles and afterwards is burned out in a method called calcination, which results in silica particles with small pores, known as mesoporous silica. In addition to this several other additives to the reaction have been studied, resulting in several new silica variations including macroporous monoliths and shell-core particles.

I integrated your lede with mine and dropped the kinetics section as it is more advanced. I feel like the morphological sections should be included in the lead and they are an important portion of the article and therefore should be summarized at least briefly in the lede. Let me know what you think. --Imminent77 (talk) 15:05, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

The main thing is to keep it super general, avoiding monodisperse, lots of historical names (can be mentioned in a subsection). Its basically sol-gel and I am trying to figure out why this article is not merged with sol-gel. The chemistry is creaky and old fashioned. A main dude in this area is Brinker, who wrote the book on sol-gel.--Smokefoot (talk) 15:13, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

I am confused as you say keep monodisperse out of the lede, however you have monodisperse in your version of the lede. How about I add the second proposed lede with monodisperse and the reference to Kolbe dropped but keep the reference to Stöber since it is named after him? --Imminent77 (talk) 15:21, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

As to about merging it with sol-gel, while it is a sol-gel reaction, I believe the Stöber process is notable enough and has enough content that it should have it's own article. But maybe in the section of sol-gel that covers silica it could have a main article redirect to this page --Imminent77 (talk) 15:28, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

I am not paying a lot of attention, sorry. Some quick thoughts: You are correct that this process is exclusively about TEOS sol-gel, a special case of sol-gel. Is there really any paper that states the mechanism you wrote out, ie. 2 (EtO)3SiOH to (EtO)3SiOSi(OEt)3. We should be able to find more general refs for some of the citations. What about moving the math to an appendix? thanks, --Smokefoot (talk) 03:17, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

One of the papers does have that mechanism wrote out in it, I don't have all of the papers on this computer but I will add the reference for it when I do. I think since your comment EdChem added some more general citations and when I a chance I will look for some as well. As for the math I just finished going through the kinetics section and removing some of the more unnecessary equations to simplify it. I removed the main model equation and the derivation of the base terms that influence the kinetics of the reaction. --Imminent77 (talk) 17:52, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

On the mechanism, I agree with Smokefoot that triethoxysilanol as the sole hydrolysis product is exceptionally unlikely, and I know some texts just show an overall hydrolysis to silicic acid. This would inevitably be step-wise and in the one-pot with condensation co-occurring, there will be a big range of processes. I have edited the article to better reflect that. Obviously it can be changed again if a source is definitive on this mechanism, but the books I have cited suggest to me this is not likely. I do agree that sol-gel should include a link to this article, I've added a book here that comments on it still being widely used and that it was "pioneering" work originally. Definitely believe a stand-alone article is justified, though more on the applications would be good. EdChem (talk) 21:46, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

I mis-interpreted what Smokefoot meant about the mechanism equations, I thought he meant that I should have a source for the equation. I agree that having some examples of the additional pathways makes it clearer. As to the applications, I have added a couple applications that are specific to the mesoporous silica. --Imminent77 (talk) 22:07, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

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