From big to small: A general strategy of converting lanthanide coordination polymers to oxide and hydroxide nanoparticles

A facile method is demonstrated to obtain CeO2 by hydrolyzing coordination polymer nanowires Ce(1,3-BDC)1.5·6H2O (1,3-BDC = 1,3-benzene dicarboxylate) in basic solution. The products that preserved the morphologies of the precursors were constituted from plenty of CeO2 nanoparticles. This method can increase the surface areas significantly, which is important for its application in catalytic activities. Importantly, La (OH)3 nanoparticles could be obtained after the basic treatment of corresponding coordination polymer, indicating that this method is general to be applied to obtain other lanthanide oxides and hydroxides. After calcinations, well crystallized oxides exhibited different properties from their bulk counterparts due to their increased surface areas.