Novel synthesis of mesoporous crystalline gamma-alumina by replication of MOF-5-derived nanoporous carbon template

In this work, MOF-5-derived nanoporous carbon was used as a hard template for synthesizing mesoporous gamma-alumina from aluminum 2-butoxide as a precursor. The prepared mesoporous gamma-alumina was characterized by X-ray powder diffraction, thermal analysis (TGA-DTA), scanning and transmission electron microscopy, and surface area analysis (S-BET). This simple, efficient approach for the preparation of mesoporous gamma-alumina produced highly pure mesoporous gamma-alumina with a high degree of crystallinity, large surface area of 320 m(2) g(-1), and pore volume of 0.85 m(3) g(-1).