A controllable ionic liquid-assisted hydrothermal route to prepare CoCO3 crystals and their conversion to porous Co3O4.

In this work, we have synthesized CoCO3 microaggregation, microcubes and nanoplates by an ionic liquid-assisted hydrothermal method. The morphologies of the CoCO3 crystals depend on the concentration of the ionic liquid and the reaction temperature. Moreover, the as-prepared CoCO3 crystals can serve as a useful precursor to obtain porous Co3O4 particles with similar morphology by means of calcinations. (© 2012 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]