Synthesis of bismuth micro- and nanospheres by a simple refluxing method

Microwave synthesis of bismuth nanospheres using bismuth citrate as a precursor

“…Otherwise, the viscosity of the reaction system increased with the increase of the concentration of urea, which made it difficult to remove the excessive urea under normal condition. It illustrates that the concentration of urea plays a key role in the size control of bismuth nanospheres, similar with the example of poly(vinylpyrrolidone) (PVP) capped bismuth nanospheres [13,14].…”

“…Size-dependent transport and thermoelectric properties of individual poly-crystalline bismuth nanowires were also investigated [4]. Up to now, a wide variety of bismuth nanostructures have been synthesized, such as nanoparticles [5,6], nanowires [7], nanorods [8], nanotubes [9], triangular nanoplates [10], nanocubes [11] as well as nanospheres (>100 nm) [12][13][14][15]. Among the metal nanostructures, monodisperse metallic nanospheres have attracted considerable attention because of their unique optical, catalytic, novel chemical and biological properties [16][17][18][19][20][21][22].…”

“…Many metallic nanomaterials have been fabricated via microwave irradiation method [31,36]. In previous work, we described a simple refluxing method for the preparation of bismuth micro-and nanospheres from bismuth citrate and urea in the presence of PVP, using ethylene glycol as both solvent and reducing agent [13]. To the best of our knowledge, studies on synthesis of bismuth nanospheres by microwave irradiation have never been reported.…”

Highly efficient photocatalytic reduction of Cr(VI) by bismuth hollow nanospheres

“…[11][12][13] In the past decades, bismuth nanostructures with different morphologies and specific electronic band structures such as nanotubes [14], micro/ nanospheres [15][16][17], nanoparticles [18], nanocubes [19] and nanowires [20] were successfully synthesized. In our previous study, bismuth hollow nanospheres were also successfully synthesized and exhibited high efficient Cr(VI) adsorption characteristics [21].…”

“…To better understand the outstanding photocatalytic ability of bismuth hollow nanospheres, the diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) were carried Catalysis Communications 42 (2013) [14][15][16][17][18][19] out. To the best of our knowledge, there is no report involving the photocatalytic activities of Bi nanomaterials in wastewater treatment.…”