Facile solvothermal synthesis and application of spherical oxide
nanostructures
Dehong Chen1, Lu Cao1, Fuzhi Huang2, Yi-Bing Cheng2, Rachel A. Caruso1,3
1School
of Chemistry, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia
of Materials Engineering, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria 3800, Australia
3CSIRO Materials Science and Engineering, Private Bag 33, Clayton South, Victoria 3169, Australia
dehongc@unimelb.edu.au
2Department
The effectiveness of materials in applications can be enhanced by control of the
structural architecture of the material. For a variety of practical applications, the
fabrication of desired morphologies and textures is important, as well as control in
crystallinity, porosity and composition.1-10 In this presentation, a combined sol-gel
self-assembly and solvothermal process will be demonstrated as a facile synthesis
strategy to fabricate diverse spherical oxide nanostructures with tunable physical
properties. This approach allows us to control particle size, monodispersity and
composition of the hybrid precursor beads in the sol-gel self-assembly process, as
well as crystal phase and crystallinity, specific surface area, porosity, and surface
textures of the oxide nanostructures during the subsequent solvothermal
crystallization process.2-10 The resultant materials were characterized in detail using
different techniques including X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy
(SEM), high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM), nitrogen gas
sorption and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). the morphological evolution and
crystallization process of the unique core/shell, york/shell and hollow oxide
nanostructures were carefully investigated and a comprehensive formation
mechanism was proposed for the formation process.
The resultant mesoporous titania beads have been applied to fabricate working
electrodes for dye-sensitized solar cells8-10 and achieved a solar to electric power
conversion efficiency of 11.2%,8 indicating great potential for application in the
photovoltaic field. The hollow anatase spheres showed an enhanced photocatalytic
performance towards the degradation of organic dye. 2 Owing to their integrated
features, including high specific surface area, tunable pore size and monodisperse
grain size, these oxide nanostructures would have a number of other potential
applications in lithium ion batteries and catalysis.
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