title: Aerosol-spray diverse mesoporous metal oxides from metal nitrates.
abstract: Transition metal oxides are widely used in solar cells, batteries, transistors, memories, transparent conductive electrodes, photocatalysts, gas sensors, supercapacitors, and smart windows. In many of these applications, large surface areas and pore volumes can enhance molecular adsorption, facilitate ion transfer, and increase interfacial areas; the formation of complex oxides (mixed, doped, multimetallic oxides and oxide-based hybrids) can alter electronic band structures, modify/enhance charge carrier concentrations/separation, and introduce desired functionalities. A general synthetic approach to diverse mesoporous metal oxides is therefore very attractive. Here we describe a powerful aerosol-spray method for synthesizing various mesoporous metal oxides from low-cost nitrate salts. During spray, thermal heating of precursor droplets drives solvent evaporation and induces surfactant-directed formation of mesostructures, nitrate decomposition and oxide cross-linking. Thirteen types of monometallic oxides and four groups of complex ones are successfully produced, with mesoporous iron oxide microspheres demonstrated for photocatalytic oxygen evolution and gas sensing with superior performances.
authors.affiliation: 1] College of Chemistry and Materials Science, The Key Laboratory of Functional Molecular Solids, Ministry of Education, Anhui Laboratory of Molecular-Based Materials, Center for Nano Science and Technology, Anhui Normal University, Wuhu 241000, China [2] Department of Physics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong SAR, China.
authors.forename: Long
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Kuai
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong SAR, China.
authors.forename: Junxin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong SAR, China.
authors.forename: Tian
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Ming
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong SAR, China.
authors.forename: Caihong
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Fang
authors.affiliation: Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, China.
authors.forename: Zhenhua
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: College of Chemistry and Materials Science, The Key Laboratory of Functional Molecular Solids, Ministry of Education, Anhui Laboratory of Molecular-Based Materials, Center for Nano Science and Technology, Anhui Normal University, Wuhu 241000, China.
authors.forename: Baoyou
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Geng
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong SAR, China.
authors.forename: Jianfang
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wang