Iron-Based Oxygen Scavengers on Mesoporous Silica Nanospheres

Iron-based materials are among the most commonly used oxygen scavengers. Here, we investigated the mesoporous silica nanosphere (MSN)-supported iron-based scavengers, such as FeO nanoparticles and different atomic layer deposition (ALD) coatings (FeO and Fe). We found that the scavenger performance is a result of a complex interplay between available Brunauer-Emmett-Teller surface area and the scavenger composition, with the combination of infiltrated nanoparticles and Fe-ALD coating resulting in the best performance. When the glucose-based treatment of MSN is used to further enhance oxygen scavenging capacity, Fe-ALD coating yields the best performance, with a high oxygen adsorption capacity of 126.8 mL/g. ALD deposition of Fe represents a versatile method to introduce Fe-based oxygen scavengers onto different supports, and it can facilitate the integration of scavengers with different types of packaging, as the deposition can be performed at a low temperature of 150 °C.