Mesoporous organic–inorganic hybrid material containing hydrosilylated soybean oil

Vegetable oils are attractive substrates for use as renewable feedstock in polymer industry. Hydrosilylation is a way to insert silicon groups in an olefin, and if the silylated olefin has hydrolysable groups, it can be used as precursor reagent in sol–gel synthesis. In this work, for the first time, the hydrosilylation of the vegetable soybean oil is reported, and it was used as sol–gel molecular precursor, along with tetraethylorthosilicate, varying their proportions. The obtained organic–inorganic silica-based hybrid material was characterized by infrared spectroscopy, N₂ adsorption–desorption isotherms, scanning electron microscopy, and thermogravimetric analysis. The hybrid contains the oil chain covalently anchored, and it presents interesting textural characteristics, such as high surface area and mesoporosity, which seem not be markedly affected by the organic amount added.