Hard-templating pathway to create mesoporous magnesium oxide

Mesoporous magnesium oxide has been prepared through a hard-templating pathway using mesoporous carbon aerogel as template and magnesium nitrate solution as MgO precursor. The used carbon aerogel can be synthesized by drying a resorcinol/formaldehyde polymer under ambient pressure conditions instead of the usually employed supercritical drying method. After removal of the carbon template by a simple combustion at 600 degreesC for 8 h in air, the obtained MgO primary particles have close to spherical shapes, which are connected to form a three-dimensional network structure. The surface area and pore volume can reach up to 150 m(2 .) g(-1) and 0.73 cm(3 .) g(-1), respectively. A carbon aerogel template with larger pore diameter also leads to MgO with an increasing pore diameter. Such a tunable mesopore structure of MgO with high surface area, large pore volume, and tunable pore size could be advantageous for practical applications, for instance in catalysis.