Synthesis of aluminum-doped mesoporous zirconia with improved thermal stability

• We synthesize mesoporous zirconia with different amounts of aluminum doping.
• Doping of zirconia with aluminum stabilizes tetragonal zirconia.
• Increasing aluminum content will increase the crystallization temperature.
• Increasing aluminum content will improve the thermal stability.
• The mesoporous zirconia with Al/Zr of 1 possess highest thermal stability.

Mesoporous zirconia doped with varying amounts of aluminum are synthesized by the evaporation induced self-assembly (EISA) method, and their structure and textural properties are investigated extensively. The results show that in contrast to most other zirconia binary system, doping of zirconia with aluminum stabilizes tetragonal zirconia over the cubic phase, and the crystallization temperature of the as-obtained powders increases with increasing aluminum content, thereby improve the thermal stability of the mesoporous zirconia. The BET surface area and pore volume of the samples doped with the same amount of aluminum decreases with increasing calcination temperature, accompanied by an increase in the mean BJH pore size. Furthermore, the BET surface area and pore volume of the samples calcined at the same temperature increase with increasing amounts of aluminum. For sample with an Al/Zr molar ratio of 1, the disordered “wormhole-like” mesoporous structure remained even after calcination at 1000 °C for 1 h.

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