A super-microporous zirconia–alumina nanomaterial with high thermal stability

•A super-microporous zirconia–alumina material.•The material with high surface area and thermal stability.•The material with narrow pore size distribution of 1.5 nm.•The material was synthesized by an economic template AEO-7.

A super-microporous zirconia–alumina (pore size in the range of 1–2 nm) with narrow pore size distribution has been synthesized successfully by using an inexpensive nonionic surfactant fatty alcohol polyoxyethylene ether (AEO-7) as the template in ethanol solvent. As the Zr/Al molar ratio is 0.1, the material has high surface area of 413 m2/g and a large pore volume of 0.17 cm3/g after calcination at 400 °C. Even after calcination at 900 °C, the microporous structure remained, exhibiting a significant thermal stability.