日本ゼオライト学会　刊行物 Publication of Japan Zeolite Association

Mesoporous silica (MPS) is an inorganic particle having well-ordered hexagonal nano-channels and large specific surface area, and has attracted increasing attention as a novel material for separations and reactions. The MPS is also available as inorganic filler for high performance polymer composites, and two applications of MPS were reviewed in this manuscript. The MPS was used for poly (ethylene oxide) (PEO)-based solid polymer electrolytes (SPE) as novel inorganic filler. For improvement in ionic conductivity in solid state, an ionic liquid (IL) was introduced into the periodic nano-tunnels of MPS, and the IL-filled MPS (IL-MPS) was filled with PEO-based SPE. The addition of IL-MPS was able to realize the improvement in both ionic conductivity and mechanical strength of SPE. The MPS was also used as a filler for poly (L-lactide) (PLLA), which is well-known as a biodegradable polymer, to control the hydrolytically degradation. Incorporating MPS into PLLA highly accelerated the hydrolysis in an alkaline solution. This is due to the high dissolution characteristic of MPS in an alkaline solution. The MPS is interesting materials as functional filler from the viewpoint of the composite with polymer because of its tunable characteristics such as pore size, filler shape, surface condition, etc.