UV/ozone treatment was applied to remove the organic template within mesoporous SBA-15. This method is a non-thermal photochemical treatment, which is simple to operate and can easily eliminate the triblock copolymer Pluronic P123 from SBA-15. The as-synthesized, UV/ozone treated and calcined SBA-15 samples were characterized thoroughly by XRD, TEM, FT-IR and BET. The results showed that the UV/ozone treatment was an effective method to remove the template from pores of SBA-15 completely under mild conditions, and the final product maintained highly ordered frameworks, higher surface areas and larger pore openness, avoiding the structure contraction by high thermal calcinations.

Key words: mesoporous SBA-15, UV/ozone treatment, organic template