Synthesis of mesoporous and tetragonal zirconia with inherited morphology from metal–organic frameworks†
Abstract
Controlled synthesis of porous metal oxides with desired morphology has been motivating scientists to explore and develop new preparation methodologies. Among them, thermal decomposition of metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) has been employed for the fabrication of several metal oxides. In this work, this strategy is employed to prepare mesoporous and tetragonal zirconia (t-ZrO2) from a metal–organic framework (UiO-66), acting as both a morphological template and a zirconium source. This process avoids the use and removal of an extra template as well as the addition of stabilizers for t-ZrO2. After thermal decomposition at 500 °C, t-ZrO2 inherited an octahedral morphology from the pristine precursor and possessed small nanoparticles with an average size of 3.1 nm. The derived t-ZrO2 had a large surface area of 174 m2 g−1 and a pore diameter of 5–8 nm. The formation mechanism of t-ZrO2 was also discussed. This simple and potentially universal strategy can be used to fabricate porous metal oxides with desired shape for many applications.