A simple route to synthesize hierarchical porous ZrO 2

• Published in: RSC advances 2014, Vol.4 (16), p.8039-8043
• Main Authors: Chen, Yu, Xia, Hui, Zhang, Daiguo, Yan, Zilai, Ouyang, Fangping, Xiong, Xiang, Huang, Xiaoyi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 2046-2069; 2046-2069
• DOI: 10.1039/C3RA47967F

A simple method for preparing porous ZrO 2 has been proposed by directly decomposing a Zr(NO 3 ) 4 ·5H 2 O ethanol sol–gel solution. Contrary to other traditional sol–gel methods, porous ZrO 2 with multi-sized macro- and meso-pores are synthesized via only one simple step. The size of the macropores ranges from 100 nm to 500 nm. Remarkably, we also isolated some highly dispersed ZrO 2 nanoparticles (∼60 nm), which on their surface or even in the whole body are fully filled with well-sized ever-smaller spherical mesopores with an average diameter around ∼5 nm. A further investigation of low-temperature nitrogen absorption has shown a high surface area over 162 m 2 g −1 for the fully crystallized ZrO 2 . No more additional modifiers or complicated preparations are needed in the present method, which promises a new potential option in fabricating high-porosity materials.