Synthesis of Biomorphic ZrO2-CeO2 Nanostructures by Silkworm Silk Template

A simple and green technique has been developed to prepare hierarchical biomorphic ZrO₂-CeO₂, using silkworm silk as the template. Different from traditional immersion technics, the whole synthesis process depends more on the restriction or direction functions of the silkwormsilk template. The analytic results showed that ZrO₂-CeO₂ exhibited a well-crystallized hierarchically interwoven hollow fiber structure with 16-28 μm in diameter. The grain size of the sample calcined at 800 oC was about 14 nm. Consequently, the interwoven meshwork at three dimensions is formed due to the direction of biotemplate. The action mechanism is summarily discussed here. It may bring the biomorphic ZrO₂-CeO₂ nanomaterials with hierarchical interwoven structures to more applications, such as catalysts.