Large-scale synthesis of hierarchical flowerlike boehmite architectures

Three-dimensional flowerlike boehmite architectures were synthesized on a large scale via a surfactant-assisted hydrothermal method. The XRD pattern showed that the AlOOH was fully crystallized and exhibited an orthorhombic phase. SEM and TEM images indicated that the flowerlike AlOOH architectures, consisting of nanosheets of 50 nm in thickness, were 550-800 nm in diameters and 1 μm in lengths. SAED pattern revealed that the flowerlike AlOOH was polycrystalline. Nitrogen adsorption/desorption measurement indicated that hierarchical AlOOH architectures had Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) surface area of about 70.1 m(2)/g. The effects of reaction times and the surfactant on the morphologies were also investigated. It was found that CTAB played a crucial role. The formation mechanism of the flowerlike AlOOH architectures was proposed and discussed based on the experimental results.