Synthesis of ZnO nanowires with supercritical carbon dioxide and post heat treatment

Description

ZnO is a n-type semiconductor material with many interesting properties e.g., piezoelectric, optical, as well as photocatalytic and anti-bacterial activities. Solution based hydro-thermal methods are often used to synthesize nanostructures of ZnO. However, these tech-niques require various chemicals and long synthesis times. This work presents a novel synthesis route for producing photoactive ZnO nanowires using supercritical carbon dioxide. In this method, a galvanized steel substrate was treated with supercritical car-bon dioxide in 300 bar and 50 °C for 60 minutes. The reaction was catalyzed using a solution of water, ethanol and copper(II) hexafluoroacetylacetonate. After the super-critical carbon dioxide treatment, the sub-strate was calcined in 300 °C for 120 minutes. The surfaces were characterized with SEM, FTIR, XRD and optical spectros-copy. The SEM results showed that the cal-cining did not change the surface morpholo-gy of the nanowires. According to the FTIR results, the surface structure had changed from zinc hydroxycarbonate to ZnO after calcining. Presence of ZnO was further con-firmed with XRD. Methylene blue test was performed for the ZnO surface to ensure photoactivity of the sample. This study pre-sents a unique and rapid synthesis method that utilizes minimal amount of chemicals for producing nanoscale ZnO structures for pho-tocatalytic applications.

Aikajakso	4 jouluk. 2017
Tapahtuman otsikko	Nanotech ME 2017/SurTech ME 2017
Tapahtuman tyyppi	Conference
Sijainti	Dubai, Yhdistyneet arabiemiirikunnatNäytä kartalla
Tunnustuksen arvo	International