Large scale synthesis of flower-like SnO2 nanostructures via a facile hydrothermal route
Graphical abstract
We successfully synthesized hierarchical assembled flower-like SnO2 with the reagents of sodium citrate and PEG via a simple hydrothermal technique and subsequent calcination.
Introduction
Tin oxide (SnO2), as a multifunctional n-type semiconductor with a wide band gap (Eg=3.6 eV), has been the eye-catching in various fields, such as catalysts [1], gas sensors [2], solar cell [3], optoelectronic devices [4], and electrode materials [5]. Over the past years, the controlled synthesis of complex nanomaterials with unusual architectures has attracted vast interests due to their unique structures as well as their tremendous potential application in various fields [6]. Particularly, the novel three-dimensional (3D) hierarchical architectures which are assembled of 1D or 2D nanoscale building blocks. Various methods, such as thermal evaporation technique [7], sol-gel method [8], chemical vapor deposition (CVD) [9] and hydrothermal route [10] have been developed to fabricate 3D hierarchical architectures. Among them, the hydrothermal method has been proved to be effective for preparation hierarchical SnO2 architectures [11]. Zhang et al. fabricated flower-like nanospheres via one step template-free hydrothermal reaction with the help of PEG400 [12]; Huang et al. prepared pours flower-like SnO2 nanostructure with average size of 6.1 nm by annealing of the flower-like tin sulfur (SnS2) nanostructures [13]. Although the above various morphologies of SnO2 have been synthesized, it still remains a huge challenge to self-assemble nanostructures with well-defined morphology and uniform size.
In our present work, the hierarchical flower-like SnO2 architecture consisting of nanosheets was successfully synthesized via sodium citrate and PEG assisted hydrothermal. The as-prepared products were illuminated in terms of their crystallinity, morphology and structure. Furthermore, the functions of reagents on the morphologies of precursors were investigated in detail. A possible growth mechanism was elaborated. The non-trivial behavior of nanosized SnO2 may be driven by the properties of grain boundaries.
Section snippets
Experimental
All the chemicals were analytical-grade reagents and were directly used without further purification. In a topical hydrothermal process, Tin(II) chloride dihydrate (SnCl22H2O, 4 mmol), sodium citrate (Na3C6H5O72H2O, 10 mmol), Sodium hydroxide (NaOH, 2 mmol) and polyethylene glycol (PEG, 2 mmol) were dissolved into 10 ml distilled water with vigorous stirring. Later, 10 ml ethanol was added and a milky-white solution was obtained, which was next transferred into a Teflon-lined stainless steel
Results and discussion
The phase and purity of the products were identified by X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) measurement. The typical XRD patterns of the final SnO2 product were presented in Fig. 1(a), all of the diffraction peaks can be well indexed to the tetragonal rutile SnO2 structure (JCPDS No. 41-1445, ao=bo=4.738 Å, and co=3.187 Å). No characteristic peaks were observed for other impurities, revealing the high purity of the prepared SnO2. The strong and sharp peaks indicate that the products are highly
Conclusions
In summary, 3D hierarchical flower-like SnO2 architectures consisting of well ordered nanosheets were synthesized via the hydrothermal route and thermal annealing processes. The role of additives on the morphology of the products was investigated in detail. We found that sodium promotes the formation of nanosheets and assembles the nanosheets in flower-like architecture and that PEG provides nucleation sites and makes the nanoflowers grow more uniformly. Furthermore, a possible growth mechanism
Acknowledgments
This work was supported in part by National Natural Science of China (51202302), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. CDJZR12130051) and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation funded project (No. 2013T60839).
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