Colloidal Solution Combustion Synthesis: Toward Mass Production of a Crystalline Uniform Mesoporous CeO₂ Catalyst with Tunable Porosity

High Resolution Image Download MS PowerPoint Slide Mesoporous metal oxides with uniform porosity are of considerable interest. Their economical production on a large scale in an efficient manner, however, remains a challenging task for commercialization. In this work, we demonstrate for the first time a scalable, economic, energy and time efficient method for the synthesis of a crystalline mesoporous CeO 2 catalyst with tailored porosity, by utilizing colloidal SiO 2 as a template. The size and amount of colloidal particles can tune the porosity of the CeO 2 nanostructure as well as alter the heat transfer and heat balance of combustion. As-prepared CeO 2 possesses uniform 22 nm pores and a 0.6 mL/g pore volume, which is the largest pore volume for CeO 2 reported. The obtained mesoporous CeO 2 catalyst exhibited excellent activity for soot and carbon monoxide oxidation. In principle, this method can be applied to synthesize different high-porosity crystalline oxides, and mesoporous CuO was also successfully prepared, thus demonstrating the generality of the method.