Silica nanoparticles have rapidly found applications in medicine, supercapacitors, batteries, optical fibers and concrete materials, because silica nanoparticles have tunable physical, chemical, optical and mechanical properties. In most applications, high-purity silica comes from synthetic organic precursors, yet this approach could be costly, polluting and non-biocompatible. Alternatively, natural silica sources from biomass are often cheap and abundant, though they contain impurities. In this study, silica nanoparticles were synthesized from Vigna subterraneanut shells using sol-gel method. The nanoparticles were characterized using SEM, XRD, FT-IR and XRF. The nanoparticles showed particles aggregates of free spaces. The FT-IR also showed the presence of Si-H, Si-O-Si and –OH stretching. They showed a diffraction peak at 21º and 98.20 % SiO2 as detected by XRD and XRF respectively. These properties therefore confirm the synthesis of silica nanoparticles and indicate the potentials of bambara nut shells as good source of silica.

Keywords: Nanoparticles, Synthesis, Silica, Bambara nut.