Eco-friendly synthesis of nanocrystalline zirconia with tunable pore size

Microporous/mesoporous zirconia materials have been successfully synthesized by controlling hydrolysis rate without adding acid or base and calcining under mild conditions, and characterized by XRD, TEM and N-2 adsorption-desorption. The results show that the as-synthesized materials are super-microporous (pore size in the range of 1-2 nm) as using dimethyl distearyl ammonium chloride as the template, but mesoporous (pore size > 2 nm) when didodecyl dimethyl ammonium chloride and bisoctyl dimethyl ammonium chloride are employed. By changing the carbon chain length of the templates, the average pore sizes of the zirconia samples are tailored, and a range of pore sizes from 1.2 to 4.2 nm is obtained. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.