Fabrication and photocatalytic activity of YMn 2O 5 nanoparticles

Abstract

In this work, a polyacrylamide gel route is introduced to synthesize YMn 2O 5 nanoparticles. It is demonstrated that high-quality YMn 2O 5 nanoparticles with a uniform size and spherical shape can be prepared using different chelating agents. However, the average particle size of the products is found to have a dependence on the choice of the chelating agent. The sample prepared using citric acid as the chelating agent has an average particle size of ~ 45 nm, while the sample prepared by using the chelating agent EDTA has a particle size centered around 70 nm. The optical energy bandgap of the citric acid- and EDTA-resulted samples is obtained, from optical absorption measurements, to be 1.21 and 1.17 eV, respectively. The photocatalytic experiments reveal that the as-prepared YMn 2O 5 nanoparticles exhibit an interesting photocatalytic activity for oxidative decomposition of methyl red under ultraviolet and visible-light irradiation.