Hydrothermal Synthesis, Characterization and Exploration of Photocatalytic Activities of Polyoxometalate: Ni-CoWO4 Nanoparticles
Fahad A. Alharthi, Hamdah S. Alanazi, Amjad Alsyahi, Naushad Ahmad
Abstract
This study demonstrated the hydrothermal synthesis of bimetallic nickel-cobalt tungstate nanostructures, Ni-CoWO4 (NCW-NPs), and their phase structure, morphology, porosity, and optical properties were examined using X-ray Diffraction (XRD), Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), Scanning electron microscopy- energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDS), high resolution Transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) and Raman instruments. It was found that as-calcined NCW-NPs have a monoclinic phase with crystal size ~50–60 nm and is mesoporous. It possessed smooth, spherical, and cubic shape microstructures with defined fringe distance (~0.342 nm). The photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue (MB) and rose bengal (RB) dye in the presence of NCW-NPs was evaluated, and about 49.85% of MB in 150 min and 92.28% of RB in 90 min degraded under visible light. In addition, based on the scavenger’s study, the mechanism for photocatalytic reactions is proposed.