Physicochemical properties and photocatalytic activity of MoO3 nanostructures: Evaluation of structural, optical, vibrational, and morphological properties

Abstract

A simple co-precipitation technique was adopted to prepare MoO3 nanostructures using a variety of surfactants, including SDS, PVP, and CTAB. The prepared samples were characterized using a variety of physicochemical methods. The MoO3 nanostructures with and without surfactants were crystallized in the orthorhombic phase, according to the microstructural analysis. Due to SDS's diminished impact on particle size reduction, a surface morphology study of SDS-assisted MoO3 reveals that it is made up of rod-like, elongated particles with a size of 28 nm or less. The enhanced photocatalytic abilities of the synthesized samples were examined for photodegradation of Rhodamine B (RhB) under ultraviolet light irradiation. The SDS-MoO3 photocatalyst, which outperforms all other produced MoO3 nanostructures in terms of photocatalytic activity, was found to destroy 95.4% of RhB molecules after 140 min in the vicinity of it. Furthermore, the mechanism of the deteriorating process was examined by calculating the rate constant (k) and half-life (t1/2). The trapping experiment shows that the addition of two radicals (Ascorbic acid and Methanol) had great influence on the photocatalytic degradation percentage of the samples, and the degradation rate was less than 50%.