Guided Assembly of Microporous/Mesoporous Manganese Phosphates by Bifunctional Organophosphonic Acid Etching and Templating

Abstract Manganese (Mn)‐based compounds are important materials for both energy conversion and energy storage. Unfortunately, it has been a significant challenge to develop highly ordered microporous/mesoporous structures for them to provide more active sites for these applications. In order to do so using the soft‐templating method, three conditions have to be met, namely, a strong interaction between the inorganic precursor and the organic templates; eliminating the formation of bulk manganese phosphate; and the preservation of the manganese phosphate framework without it collapsing upon template removal. Herein, a soft‐templating approach is reported using an organophosphonic acid (n‐hexylphosphonic acid) as both the etching and the templating agent, followed by high‐vacuum‐assisted annealing. This approach simultaneously satisfies the above conditions. Both microporous and mesoporous manganese phosphates with uniform pore sizes and well‐defined pore structures are obtained. The utilization of the organophosphonic acid is shown to be the key in the transformation from bulk manganese oxide into a highly ordered microporous phosphate. A very high surface area of 304.1 m² g⁻¹ is obtained for the microporous manganese phosphate, which is the highest among the reported values for Mn‐based compounds. The ultrafine micropores and high specific surface area of our manganese phosphate promote electrocatalytic activity for the oxygen evolution reaction.