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Effect of solvents on ZnO nanostructures synthesized by solvothermal method assisted by microwave radiation: a photocatalytic study

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Abstract

The present work reports the synthesis of zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles with hexagonal wurtzite structure considering a solvothermal method assisted by microwave radiation and using different solvents: water (H2O), 2-ethoxyethanol (ET) and ethylene glycol (EG). The structural characterization of the produced ZnO nanoparticles has been accessed by scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, room-temperature photoluminescence and Raman spectroscopies. Different morphologies have been obtained with the solvents tested. Both H2O and ET resulted in rods with high aspect ratio, while EG leads to flower-like structure. The UV absorption spectra showed peaks with an orange shift for synthesis with H2O and ET and blue shift for synthesis with EG. The different synthesized nanostructures were tested for photocatalyst applications, revealing that the ZnO nanoparticles produced with ET degrade faster the molecule used as model dye pollutant, i.e. methylene blue.

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Acknowledgements

This work has been financed by the European Commission under Projects INVISIBLE (FP7 ERC AdG No 228144), and ORAMA CP-IP 246334-2, by FEDER funds through the COMPETE 2020 programme and the Portuguese Science Foundation (FCT-MEC) through BPD/76992/2011 and the Projects UID/CTM/50025/2013, EXCL/CTM-NAN/0201/2012, PTDC/CTM-POL/1484/2012, RECI/FIS-NAN/0183/2012 (FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER- 027494). J. Rodrigues thanks FCT for her PhD Grant, SFRH/BD/76300/2011.

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  1. CENIMAT/I3N, Departamento de Ciência dos Materiais, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade Nova de Lisboa (FCT-UNL), Caparica, 2829-516, Lisbon, Portugal

    A. Pimentel, P. Duarte, D. Nunes, R. Martins & E. Fortunato

  2. Departamento de Física e I3N, Universidade de Aveiro, Campus Universitário de Santiago, 3810-193, Aveiro, Portugal

    J. Rodrigues, F. M. Costa & T. Monteiro

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  1. A. Pimentel
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Pimentel, A., Rodrigues, J., Duarte, P. et al. Effect of solvents on ZnO nanostructures synthesized by solvothermal method assisted by microwave radiation: a photocatalytic study. J Mater Sci 50, 5777–5787 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-015-9125-7

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