A mild solution strategy for the synthesis of mesoporous CeO2 nanoflowers derived from Ce(HCOO)3

In this paper, a facile and economical route based on an oxidation induced phase transformation in alcoholic solution was developed to prepare mesoporous CeO2 nanoflowers. The whole process could be divided into two steps: the formation of Ce(HCOO)(3) with flower-like structures and the oxidation induced phase transformation from Ce(HCOO)(3) to CeO2 with unchanged morphology in the alcoholic solution. TEM results revealed that the CeO2 nanoflowers consist of rods with length and diameter of 100 and 30 nm, respectively. N-2 adsorption/desorption experiments indicated that the CeO2 nanoflowers display mesoporous structures with a mean pore size of 4 nm, and the BET surface area and pore volume of such flower-like structures are 95.7 m(2) g(-1) and 0.173 cm(3) g(-1), respectively. Prompted by the mesoporous structure, high surface area and high pore volume, we speculate that these mesoporous CeO2 flowers could be promising candidates for practical catalytic application.