The monolithic lawn-like CuO-based nanorods array used for diesel soot combustion under gravitational contact mode.

A simple and feasible contact mode called gravitational contact mode (GCM) was developed for the first time to imitate the practical state between soot and catalyst. By simulating rainwater adsorption on a lawn in nature, we synthesized a lawn-like CuO nanorods array, which exhibited rather good catalytic activity for diesel soot combustion under GCM. Moreover, the CuO nanorods array could serve as a support for composite catalysts through a sequential chemical bath deposition method and exhibited higher catalytic activity than a traditional supported catalyst. The monolithic macroscopic structure of such a catalyst shows its potential for large-scale preparation and application.