| Mesoporous sulfated zirconia can be synthesized by the surfactant templating route which was first demonstrated for silica. However, the factors which determine the sizes of the pores in zirconid are many, and they interact with each other, making the synthesis of zirconia with a specific, narrow pore size distribution a complex problem. In this work, many of the factors were studied in an attempt to prepare samples with a range of non-overlapping pore sizes which could be tested for "shape-selectivity" in an alkylation reaction.; Attempts were made to synthesize mesoporous sulfated zirconia by many different methods, including various ionic routes and the neutral templating route.; The alkylation of p-xylene with cyclohexene was used for the catalytic testing of mesoporous sulfated zirconia. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)... |
