Barium Oxide nanoparticles with robust catalytic, photocatalytic and humidity sensing properties
R. Renukadevi, R. Sundaram, Kaviyarasu Kasinathan
Abstract
Barium Oxide(BaO) nanoparticles were synthesized by simple co-precipitation method and were investigated by the catalytic activity of synthesized barium oxide nanopaticles was enumerated by epoxidation of styrene. The reaction was carried out and the product was obtained at higher efficiency. Particularly, the photocatalytic efficiency was estimated by degradation of Rhodamine-B (RhB) dye using barium oxide nanoparticles under visible light illumination. The degraded dye concentration decreases nearly to zero at 60 minutes of its contact with photocatalyst. The humidity sensing properties of the material was measured by using DC resistance measurement at room temperature that reveals the sensitivity factor of 1926. Barium oxide nanoparticles shows the response and recovery characteristics of 40s and 110s respectively. The dye started to degrade and the concentration of the dye decreases to almost zero at 1 hour of irradiation that was predicted from the degradation rate which was the plot of C/C0. The degradation efficiency was found to be 98% for 1 hour degradation.The evaluation outline on performancebasis revealed that synthesized barium oxide acts as a promising catalyst,photocatalyst and humidity sensing material were reported in detail.