Mesoporous polymers are useful materials for the synthesis of hierarchically porous, shape-controlled metal oxide nanoparticles, which have numerous applications in catalysis, optoelectronics, magnetism, and many others. In this context, we have utilized emulsion technique using cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) as a surfactant for synthesizing polystyrene nanospheres (PSNS, 46-75 nm), which found to have a specific surface area of 93.14 m<sup>2</sup>/g and average pore size of 129.34 Å. The fabricated PSNS was then used as a hard template for the co-precipitation of nickel hydroxide with PSNS. Another alternative route is to incorporate nickel(II) ions within PS beads by the addition of nickel nitrate in the emulsion medium. Nickel oxide was obtained by calcination of the nickel/polymer containing materials under air at 500°C for three hours. Both methods resulted in mesoporous, size-controlled nickel oxide nanospheres. Nickel oxide, obtained by inclusion of nickel during polymerization, had a specific surface area as ~1.5 as that of the nickel oxide, obtained by co-precipitation method.

Synthesis, characterization, and use of mesoporous polymer as hard template for the fabrication of spherical nickel oxide nanoparticles

251st National Meeting (2016)

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