Gas-generated thermal oxidation of a coordination cluster for an anion-doped mesoporous metal oxide

Central in material design of metal oxides is the increase of surface area and control of intrinsic electronic and optical properties, because of potential applications for energy storage, photocatalysis and photovoltaics. Here, we disclose a facile method, inspired by geochemical process, which gives rise to mesoporous anion-doped metal oxides. As a model system, we demonstrate that simple calcination of a multinuclear coordination cluster results in synchronic chemical reactions: thermal oxidation of Ti(8)O(10)(4-aminobenzoate)(12) and generation of gases including amino-group fragments. The gas generation during the thermal oxidation of Ti(8)O(10)(4-aminobenzoate)(12) creates mesoporosity in TiO(2). Concurrently, nitrogen atoms contained in the gases are doped into TiO(2), thus leading to the formation of mesoporous N-doped TiO(2). The mesoporous N-doped TiO(2) can be easily synthesized by calcination of the multinuclear coordination cluster, but shows better photocatalytic activity than the one prepared by a conventional sol-gel method. Owing to an intrinsic designability of coordination compounds, this facile synthetic will be applicable to a wide range of metal oxides and anion dopants.