A novel and facile impregnation-combustion fabrication of spherical CoAl2O4 supported on sepiolite nanofibers

Abstract In this study, sepiolite nanofibers-supported spherical CoAl2O4 composites were prepared by a novel and facile impregnation-combustion method, using nitrates and sepiolite minerals as the raw materials. The results showed that the optimal process for the nanocomposites formation was an impregnation step facilitated by stirring for 24 h at room temperature coupled with a calcination step performed at 300 ℃ for 6 h. The characterizations by XRD, SEM and BET revealed that the CoAl2O4 particles were dispersed evenly on the surface of the sepiolite nanofibers with a complete crystal shape and uniform particle size, and the specific surface area has been improved significantly by adopting the sepiolite nanofibers as the support. Therefore, the sepiolite nanofibers-supported spherical CoAl2O4 composites with a good dispersion and suspension performance are a promising candidate in the fields of water-based coatings, heterogeneous catalytic reactions, ceramic materials, and so on.