New organic–inorganic hybrid mesoporous tantalum oxophosphate and sulfonated tantalum oxophenylphosphate

Novel mesoporous organic–inorganic hybrid tantalum oxophenylphosphate has been synthesized hydrothermally by self-assembly of anionic surfactant sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) as structure directing agent under mild alkaline pH conditions. The mesostructure was stable on calcinations in the presence of air and during calcination at 723 K it transformed into pure mesoporous tantalum oxophosphate. Detailed characterizations including elemental analysis, solid state MAS NMR, UV–vis and FT-IR spectroscopic studies suggested the incorporation of phenyl groups in the mesoporous framework and the XRD, N2 sorption and TEM data suggested wormhole-like mesopore structure in these novel materials. The mesoporous tantalum oxophenylphosphate can be sulfonated by fuming sulfuric acid and the sulfonated derivative showed excellent proton conductivity at room temperature.