Nano Express
NH4 + directed assembly of zinc oxide micro-tubes from nanoflakes
1 Materials Center for Water Purification, Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, 110016, People's Republic of China
2 Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA
Nanoscale Research Letters 2011, 6:491 doi:10.1186/1556-276X-6-491
Published: 11 August 2011Abstract
A simple precipitation process followed with the heat treatment was developed to synthesize
ZnO micro-tubes by self-assembly of nanoflakes composed of nanoparticles. The resulting
ZnO micro-tubes demonstrated excellent photocatalytic performance in degrading methylene
blue (MB) under UV illumination. It was found that NH4+ ion played a critical role in directing the assembly of the nanoflakes to form the
micro-tube structure. A critical reaction ratio existed at or above which the ZnO
micro-tubes could be obtained. For the mixtures of solutions of (NH4)2CO3 and zinc salt, the ratio (
) was 2:1.
