Hydrothermal growth of wheatear-shaped ZnO microstructures and their photocatalytic activity

[摘要] A facile hydrothermal process was developed to synthesize novel wheatear-shaped ZnO microstructures at alow temperature (85$^{\circ}$C) without the assistance of any template agent. X-ray diffraction and field emission scanning electron microscopy were used to characterize the structure and morphology of the samples. Results showed that the length of the ‘wheatear’ was about 5.8 $\mu$m and the section width was 1.2 $\mu$m. The particles consisted of closely packed nanorods withaverage diameter of 100 nm. The growth of wheatear-shaped ZnO is very rapid and can be achieved in only 5 min. OH$^−$-driven oriented aggregation and multistep nucleation resulted in the formation of wheatear-shaped ZnO microstructures.The product had assembled open structures and it exhibited excellent photocatalytic activity in the degradation of methylorange under UV-light irradiation.

[学科分类] 材料工程

[关键词] Wheatear-shaped ZnO;hydrothermal synthesis;rapid growth;photocatalytic properties.