Abstract:
The present disclosure provides cost-effective sol-gel methods to produce nanostructured, nanoporous vanadium oxides from inexpensive vanadium halides of the formula VOX3. In one aspect, a synthetic method for preparing vanadium (IV,V) mixed oxide gels is described comprising epoxide-assisted gelation of a vanadium halide of the formula VOX3, such as VOCl3. The resulting aerogels are robust and possess similar morphology and reactivity to gels fabricated via the significantly more costly vanadium alkoxide methods.