Facile solvothermal synthesis of hierarchical flower-like Bi₂MoO₆hollow spheres as high performance visible-light driven photocatalysts

Abstract

A facile template-free method has been developed for the controllable fabrication of novel hierarchical flower-like Bi 2 MoO 6 hollow spheres via a solvothermal process in the presence of ethylene glycol. The formation mechanism was proposed based on the evolution of morphology as a function of solvothermal time, which involves the initial formation of nanoparticles followed by their selfaggregation to microspheres and transformation into hierarchical flower-like hollow spheres by Ostwald ripening. The integer appearance of the hierarchical flower-like Bi 2 MoO 6 hollow spheres was maintained after calcination at 400 C for 3 h. Furthermore, the calcined hierarchical flower-like Bi 2 MoO 6 hollow spheres exhibited excellent visible-light-driven photocatalytic efficiency for the degradation of Rhodamine B, up to 95% within 2 h, which was much higher than that of Bi 2 MoO 6 prepared by solid-state reaction and TiO 2 (P25). The improved photocatalytic performance could be ascribed to the special hierarchical hollow sphere structure, good permeability and large surface area.

A Simple Surfactant-Free Solution Phase Synthesis of Flower-like In2S3 Hierarchitectures and their Photocatalytic Activities

“…Then a secondary nucleation would be favored, and cubic angular protuberances would grow into nanopetals combining with the remaining primary particles, finally forming the 3D flower-like hierarchitectures, a process which is similar to that described as "the terrace-step-kink model" [27]. This is similar to the formation process of those flower-like nanocrystals reported previously, such as CoS [28], CuO [29], TiS 2 [30], In 2 O 3 [31], AlO(OH) [32], ZnO [33], Bi 2 MoO 6 [34], Ni(OH) 2 [35] and so on.…”

Facile synthesis of hierarchical ZnO microstructures with enhanced photocatalytic activity

“…Then, a secondary nucleation is favorable, and cubic angular protuberances grow into nanopetals combining with the remaining primary particles, finally forming the 3D flower-like hierarchitecture, which is similar to what has been described as the terrace-step-kink model [23]. This is similar to the formation process of the flowerlike nanocrystals, such as CoS [24], CuO [25], TiS 2 [26], In 2 O 3 [27], AlOOH [28], Bi 2 MoO 6 [29], Ni(OH) 2 [30] reported previously. The photocatalytic activity of the as-prepared ZnO samples was evaluated by degradation of MB dye under UV-A light irradiation.…”

A combined theoretical and experimental study of electronic structure and optical properties of β-ZnMoO4 microcrystals

“…A possible alterna-tive for the reduction of these problems and the production of these crystals at a low temperature can be the use of wet chemical methods such as coprecipitation controlled/calcination [31,32] and citrate complex precursors [33]. Recently, the hydrothermal (HT) method has attracted the attention of the scientific community in the preparation of different molybdates with several sizes, shapes and nanostructures [34][35][36]. In particular, this synthesis method enables the attainment of pure molybdate at low temperatures (120 o C -160 o C) in micro and nanoscale with excellent photoluminescence (PL) properties [37][38][39][40][41].…”