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Synthesis, characterization and enhanced photocatalytic activity of lanthanum doped ZnO nanospheres

XIAOWEN HE1, CHANGZHEN LIU1, XIAOHONG YU1, DAWEI MENG1,* , JUNFEI CHEN1, CAN LU1, XIULING WU1,*

Affiliation

  1. Faculty of Materials Science and Chemistry, Engineering Research Center of Nano-Geo Materials of Ministry of Education, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430074, China

Abstract

La-doped ZnO nanospheres (NSs) with different doping concentrations were successfully synthesized via a two-step facile co-precipitation method using oxalic acid and ammonia as precipitation agents. The results revealed that the as-synthesized samples maintained the hexagonal wurtzite structure until the dopant content reached 1.5 at.%, and La doping resulted in a significant particle size reduction. The band gap increased from 3.163 to 3.193 eV with the increase of La content from 0.5 to 1.5 at.%. The photocatalytic activity for degradation of methyl orange (MO) revealed that photocatalysts with La3+ incorporation had much higher photo-degradation efficiency than undoped ZnO. The enhanced photocatalytic performace was correlated with the increase of band gap, which promoted the generation of highly reactive radicals in the surface of ZnO. Other equally important contributor was the uniform nanoscale surface morphology, which improved the adsorption performance of MO on the surface of La-doped ZnO NSs..

Keywords

La-doped ZnO, Co-precipitation, Energy band gap, Photocatalytic degradation.

Citation

XIAOWEN HE, CHANGZHEN LIU, XIAOHONG YU, DAWEI MENG, JUNFEI CHEN, CAN LU, XIULING WU, Synthesis, characterization and enhanced photocatalytic activity of lanthanum doped ZnO nanospheres, Optoelectronics and Advanced Materials - Rapid Communications, 8, 7-8, July-August 2014, pp.672-678 (2014).

Submitted at: Jan. 13, 2014

Accepted at: July 10, 2014