Facile synthesis silica nanoparticles from indonesia silica sand and their physico-chemical properties

Silica nanoparticles are a very promising functional material when purified from silica sand for wide application. In addition, a low cost and easy method to obtain the material will be increasing the value of silica sand. To synthesize of nanoparticles using an easily scalable, cheap and simple method, we suggest a sodium silicate solution as a precursor that silica sand was diluted on the NaOH. After that, the sodium silicate solution under various alcohols (methanol and ethanol) in the acid medium was conducted by sol gel method to obtain silica nanoparticles. The synthesized of silica nanoparticles was observed to the non-agglomerate, homogeneous and spherical shape with an average size about 200 nm. We also noted the existence of NaNO3 by side product of reaction on the system, which may be the amorphous silica unidentified on the XRD results.