Water trapped in silica microspheres

Over the last three decades water confined in mesoporous silica has been studied extensively. In the vast majority of these studies the water was loaded after the synthesis, which allows the water to be easily released again from the silica at any given time. While this is an advantage for various applications it is a serious disadvantage if considered as a material for neutron moderators. However, if the water is trapped inside the silica during the synthesis this release process is hindered. It is therefore the aim of this paper to investigate water trapped in silica mesospheres during synthesis and to investigate the properties and the structure of the confined water.

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► Ultrasound synthesis assists in trapping water in closed cavities of silica microspheres.
► Supercooling of water in the spheres is observed by incoherent inelastic neutron scattering.
► Size and shape of the water-containing cavities has been determined by small-angle neutron scattering.
► Two different types of water are found in the silica microspheres.