Synthesis of mesoporous and tetragonal zirconia with inherited morphology from metal-organic frameworks

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 degrees 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 m(2) 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.