Facile and Scalable Fabrication of Highly Porous Co3O4 and α-Fe2O3 Nanosheets and Their Catalytic Properties

Highly porous metal oxide nanostructures are attractive candidates for many applications because of their rich pores. In this paper, some highly porous metal oxide nanosheets, including, but not limited to, Co3O4, and alpha-Fe2O3 have been successfully synthesized by a simple and scalable route with the aid of konjac glucomannan (KGM). The Co-KGM and Fe-KGM composite plates as precursors that were fabricated by the impregnation of KGM template in respective metal nitrate solution. After that, these composites were calcined in an air environment to form the highly porous metal oxide nanosheets because the KGM nanofibrils as sacrificial template that was combusted at high temperature. The route would offer an efficient solution to fabricate metal oxide nanosheets with highly porous textures. Furthermore, the highly porous hematite nanostructures showed excellent catalytic activity for benzylation benzene by benzyl chloride with fast conversion and high selectivity indicated promising aspects of these materials.