L'influence de paramètres de synthèse et de traitements post-synthèse sur le caractère hydrophobe/hydrophile de silices mésoporeuses organisées (SMO) de type SBA-15 a été étudiée. Ainsi nous avons montré que la durée du mûrissement peut être réduite à la durée nécessaire à la précipitation. La température, l'agitation et la durée de synthèse modulent la morphologie des particules et des agrégats. Le mode de chauffage, la présence d'un sel inorganique et le rapport silice/tensioactif ont un effet sur la structure et la texture du matériau. Concernant les traitements post-synthèse, nous avons considéré l'élimination de l'agent structurant et la fonctionnalisation par greffage. Le taux de silanols diminue suite au vieillissement mais surtout après calcination : cette étape efface les différences en termes de teneur en silanols. C'est la raison pour laquelle une nouvelle méthode d'élimination du tensioactif efficace (dès 300 °C) et rapide (dès 15 min) a été mise en œuvre : la calcination à l'aide d'un four à induction conduit à un matériau avec des propriétés structurales, texturales et une teneur en silanols supérieures à celles d'une SMO de type SBA-15 calcinée par la méthode conventionnelle. La calcination par induction a également été appliquée avec succès sur différents types de SMO telles que la SBA-16 et la MCM-41. Ensuite, l'influence des caractéristiques initiales de la SMO sur la fonctionnalisation par un greffage post-synthèse a été étudiée. Une SMO de type SBA-15 plus hydrophobe a été obtenue avec un greffon possédant une seule fonction condensable. La teneur initiale et probablement l'accessibilité des silanols ont un impact significatif sur le taux de greffage.

Under the framework of this PhD project, a study on chromatographic behaviour of selected azaarenes on octadecylsilica stationary phases during their separation by reversed phase liquid chromatography was developed. The main goal was aimed at an application of the basic RPLC principles on the retention behaviour of azaarenes including the effects such as peak tailing, peak broadening, irreproducible retention or strong retention on a stationary phase. This study was particularly focused on basic azaarenes, also called acridines, which belong to a group of persistent organic pollutants providing mutagenic and/or carcinogenic activity. The retention patterns were studied on a group of eight acridines that are often present in environmental samples polluted with polycyclic aromatic compounds. The mixture of acridines was separated under isocratic elution conditions on three octadecylsilica stationary phases using two different binary mixtures as a mobile phase. Evaluation of the surface properties of the selected stationary phases was firstly performed, followed by the separation experiments. The structure of the experiments was designed to evaluate the effect of three different factors on the retention behaviour of acridines: properties of a stationary phase, composition of a mobile phase and physical-chemical properties of acridines. The treatment of the results was based on the capacity factor values providing the best fitting and repeatability of data, but other parameters that evaluate thermodynamic and kinetic aspects of the separation process were also given. Simple correlations between the three factors and a character of retention mechanism of acridines on the given separation system were found. Application of this knowledge simplifies an optimisation process and helps to solve common separation problems for acridines, but also for other basic analytes displaying similar physical-chemical properties (Mr and pKa).

Surface chemistry plays a key role in science and technology because materials interact with their environments through their surfaces. Understanding surface chemistry can help alter/improve the properties of materials. However, surface characterization and modification often require multiple characterization and synthesis techniques. Silicon/silica-based materials are technologically important, so studying their surface properties can enable future advancements. In this dissertation, I explore surface modification and characterization of different types of Si/SiO2 thin films, including silicon wafers, fused silica capillary columns, and oblique angle sputtered Si/SiO2 thin films. In Chapters 2-5, I first present a method to rapidly silanize silica surfaces using a gas-phase synthesis that employs a small aminosilane that passivates/deactivates silicon wafers and the inner surfaces of capillary columns. This deposition takes place in a flow-through, atmospheric pressure, gas-phase reactor. This surface modification results in a significant decrease in the number of free surface silanols, which was confirmed by high-sensitivity low energy ion scattering (HS-LEIS), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE). I then show that this silanization inhibits atomic layer deposition (ALD) of zinc oxide (ZnO), which is an important optical thin film material. Finally, I performed in-depth characterization of thin films of oblique angle deposited porous Si/SiO2. These films have been used as the active coatings in solid phase microextraction (SPME) devices. The characterization and analysis in this study were mainly by scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) and various computational microstructural characterization techniques, e.g., two-point statistics. The rest of my dissertation focuses on XPS data analysis and interpretation. I first show box plots as a simple graphical tool for determining overfitting in XPS peak fitting. I next present a series of chemometrics/informatics analyses of an XPS image dataset from a patterned silicon surface with different oxide thicknesses. This dataset was probed via an initial, graphical analysis of the data, summary statistics with a focus on pattern recognition entropy (PRE), principal component analysis (PCA), multivariate curve resolution (MCR), and cluster analysis (CA).