Synthesis of High Purity Mesoporous Silica Derived from Rice Husk for Solar Cell Applications

Abstract

Engineering materials synthesis has been tailored towards the green synthesis approach as it reduces the emission of harmful substances into the atmosphere. Recently, mesoporous silica has attracted widespread investigation due to its potential as a solar cell semiconductor material. The abundance of silica in rice husk made it a cost-effective and environmentally friendly material. Despite, the abundance of silica in rice husks, obtaining high-purity silica is still challenging. Silica was extracted from rice husk using the sol-gel method without the use of harmful chemicals. As-synthesized silica from rice husk was examined with Fourier transform infrared Spectroscopy. The FTIR result revealed an absorbance peak at 797.7 cm-1 corresponding to the Si-O-Si functional silica group. The XRF result showed that 94 wt% SiO2 was present in the sample. The SEM/EDX result revealed that nanoparticles silica with high purity was produced. The BET surface area of as-synthesized mesoporous silica was found to be 222.83 m2/g. The large surface area obtained suggests that the silica produced has the potential to be used as a solar cell electrode when incorporated with the TiO2. The results obtained in this research suggested that high purity silica could be produced from rice husk without a high heat treatment process.