Facile synthesis of hierarchical flower-like γ-AlOOH films via hydrothermal route on quartz surface

Flower-like γ-AlOOH is composed of dozens of 2D platelets with thickness of about 60nm are intercrossed through heterogeneous growth on quartz surface. •Flower-like γ-AlOOH flower is made up of many nanosheets.•Morphology evolution of hierarchical flower-like γ-AlOOH was observed.•γ-Al2O3 with same hierarchical flower-like morphology was obtained by heating. In this work, an interesting morphological evolution from single nanosheet to nanosheet assemblies and flower-like nanostructures boehmite (γ-AlOOH) on quartz surface was discovered via a facile hydrothermal synthetic method. The effects of hydrothermal temperature and time on the morphology and phase of the flower-like boehmite films were studied systematically. The formation mechanism of the flower-like boehmite had also been investigated. The flower-like γ-Al2O3 was prepared by calcining the hierarchical boehmite at 500°C for 2h, preserving the same morphology during the thermal transformation process. X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR), scanning electron microscope (SEM), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) were used to characterize the structure and morphology of the products.