Abstract
Gallium oxide (Ga2O3) nanorods were facilely prepared by a simple hydrothermal synthesis, and their morphology and photocatalytic property were studied. The gallium oxide hydroxide (GaOOH) nanorods were formed in aqueous growth solution containing gallium nitrate and ammonium hydroxide at 95 °C of growth temperature. Through the calcination treatment at 500 and 1000 °C for 3 h, the GaOOH nanorods were converted into single crystalline α-Ga2O3 and β-Ga2O3 phases. From X-ray diffraction analysis, it could be confirmed that a high crystalline quality of β-Ga2O3 nanorods was achieved by calcinating at 1000 °C. The thermal behavior of the Ga2O3 nanorods was also investigated by differential thermal analysis, and their vibrational bands were identified by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. In order to examine the photocatalytic activity of samples, the photodegradation of Rhodamine B solution was observed under UV light irradiation. As a result, the α-Ga2O3 and β-Ga2O3 nanorods exhibited high photodegeneration efficiencies of 62 and 79 %, respectively, for 180 min of UV irradiation time.
Highlights
In recent years, various fabrication methods of photocatalytic products have been developed for the photodegradation of organic and inorganic pollutants in the environment [1, 2]
We can observe that the nanorod is X-ray diffraction (XRD) peaks of the as-prepared GaOOH material well agreed with the crystallized orthorhombic structure (JCPDS no. 06-0180)
For the calcined sample at 500 °C, it was observed that the as-prepared GaOOH nanorods were converted into α-Ga2O3 of the orthorhombic structure (JCPDS no. 06-0503) with dominant XRD peaks of (104) and (110) planes
Summary
Various fabrication methods of photocatalytic products have been developed for the photodegradation of organic and inorganic pollutants in the environment [1, 2]. Inorganic semiconductor nanomaterials have been considered to be promising for photocatalyst applications because they provide good physical and chemical properties with large surface area, and a variety of morphologies, such as nanorods, cubes, spheres, and flowers, could be achieved by the chemical synthesis [3,4,5,6,7,8]. In addition to the morphology and surface area of particles, the other factors which can influence the catalytic activity are pore volume, pore size, crystallinity, defect sites, exposed facets, etc. The electron transport mechanism and the exposed facets are related to the morphology of particles. In the onedimensional (1D) morphology, the generation of electron charge carriers is higher along the elongated nanostructures and gives rise to fast transport of charge carriers, due to the hampering of recombination of charge carriers.
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