Design of Porous/Hollow Structured Ceria by Partial Thermal Decomposition of Ce-MOF and Selective Etching

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have been widely used to prepare corresponding porous metal oxides via thermal treatment. However, high temperature treatment always leads to obtained metal oxides with a large crystallite size, thus decreasing their specific surface area. Different from the conventional complete thermal decomposition of MOFs, herein, using Ce-MOF as a demonstration, we choose partial thermal decomposition of MOF, followed by selective etching to prepare porous/hollow structured ceria because of the poor stability of Ce-MOF under acidic conditions. Compared with the ceria derived from complete thermal decomposition of Ce-MOF, the as-prepared ceria is demonstrated to be a good support for copper oxide species during the CO oxidation catalytic reaction. Raman spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and hydrogen temperature-programmed reduction (H₂-TPR) analysis revealed that the as-prepared ceria is favorable for strengthening the interaction between the ceria and loaded copper oxide species. This work is expected to open a new, simple avenue for the synthesis of metal oxides from MOFs via partial thermal decomposition.