Silica gel, highly porous textured matrix are generally used for synthesis of adsorbents. They are corpuscular in structure. Silica surface have a layer of hydroxyl groups and adsorbed water molecules are removed by drying at high temperature or even by treatment with suitable reagents. Silica gel surface plays significant role in catalysis, chemical separation and microelectronic fabrications.

Silica gel was used:

• on glass plates for preparative TLC and on aluminium sheets for analytical TLC
• in vacuum chromatography and TLC
• in column chromatography