Manipulation of electrospun mesoporous zirconia nanofiber with enhanced surface area and catalytic property

Abstract

Mesoporous zirconia nanofiber is a promising material in various fields, such as energy storage devices, catalyst supports, separation membranes and so on. How to enhance the surface area of mesoporous zirconia nanofiber is still an urgent problem for the pore collapse with high temperature treatment. In the present work, mesoporous zirconia nanofiber with a high surface area of 332 m 2 g −1 was obtained with the addition of SiO 2 and water vapor preheat treatment. The crystallinity and the change in microstructure of the mesoporous zirconia nanofiber, heat-treated at different temperatures in different atmospheres (air and water vapor), were compared and analyzed. The mesoporous structure formation mechanism and the validate addition of SiO 2 were presented. Furthermore, with zirconia nanofiber possessing high surface area as the supporting material, tungstate supported zirconia catalyst showed a high specific activity of bromination of phenol red up to 2.13 mmol h −1 g −1 . We anticipated that water vapor pretreatment was a promising way to enhance the surface area of mesoporous oxide nanofiber with soft template method.