Synthesis and Characterization of an Iron Nitride Constructed by a Novel Template of Metal Organic Framework

An iron nitride with high surface area was synthesized from an iron-based metal organic framework (Fe-MOF) in this work. During the synthesis process, the Fe-MOF of MIL-53 served as a hard template, a template to impart a certain degree of morphology for iron oxide products and to form porosities for iron nitride products. Moreover, it played the roles of iron sources for the synthesis of the final iron oxides and the iron nitrides. The physicochemical properties of the materials were characterized by a series of technologies including XRD, SEM, and N₂-adsorption/desorption. The results showed that the iron nitride synthesized from MIL-53 wasα-Fe2-3N. And, theα-Fe2-3N showed the morphology with loosely aggregated particles which favored the formation of rich interparticle porosities. As a result, the surface area of theα-Fe2-3N was larger than those of samples usingα-Fe₂O₃as precursors and its value was 41 m²/g. In addition, the results agreed that both raw material properties (such as crystallinity and surface areas) and nitriding approaches had significant effects on the surface areas of iron nitrides. Also the results were proved by the iron oxide synthesized with different methods. This new synthetic strategy could be a general approach for the preparation of late transition metal nitrides with peculiar properties.