[Meter]

During a recent column separation, I had to deactivate my silica gel phase by adding a small amount of triethylamine. My instructor said this is because our product is sensitive to acids. I looked it up and SiO₂ is a Lux-Flood acid, which seems to be a fairly old acid-base definition where O^2- is the accepting/donating species.

How exactly does triethylamine deactivate SiO₂ this way? My instructor even postulated that SiO₂ is actually a Brønsted acid, which is complete nonsense, right?