Silica and its forms
Since decades ago, studies on the development of silica have been studied by many researchers. Silica, which initially was only known to us as a raw material for making glass, and ceramics is now starting to be recognized to be a material with various applications. Researchers from around the world have flocked to research silica. Starting from silica from commercial materials, even those sourced from natural materials. Processing silica from natural materials in Indonesia is a promising thing. Because we know silica in Indonesia is abundant. In addition, silica has also been developed into various morphologies and sizes, according to the application. The following is an example of silica processing from geothermal sludge that has been developed by Muljani et al. (2014), a lecturer at UPN "Veteran" East Java (Figure 1). Mesoporous silica gels were successfully produced from geothermal sludge by alkali extraction followed by acidification. The...