High surface area, mesoporous, glassy alumina with a controllable pore size by nanocasting from carbon aerogels

A strategy to synthesize amorphous, mesoporous alumina by nanocasting has been developed, involving carbon aerogel as a hard template and aluminum nitrate solution as an alumina precursor. The alumina generated exhibits small, transparent granules with a 3-6 mm diameter and has inherited the three-dimensional network structure of the carbon template. The mesopore surface area of the alumina can be as high as 365 m2 g(-1), and the pore volume reaches 1.55 cm3 g(-1) after calcination at 600 degrees C in air for 8 h. The pore parameters can be varied within a certain range by variation of the carbon aerogel template and the loading amount of the alumina precursor. At high loadings, the obtained glassy alumina clearly has a bimodal pore size distribution in the mesopore range.