Facile preparation of a monodispersed CuO yolk-shelled structure with enhanced photochemical performance

Abstract

Tailored design of photocatalysts with complicated hollow structures is of great importance for promoting environmental remediation. Herein, a monodispersed CuO yolk-shelled structure is synthesized for the first time by simple calcination treatment of a pre-synthesized Cu-EG (ethylene glycol) complex with yolkshelled structure using a simple, environmentally friendly and glycerol-mediated solvothermal method. Ostwald ripening is the main formation mechanism for the yolk-shelled structure. Such CuO yolk-shelled structures show excellent photocatalytic activity, which is 3.65 times faster than that of the commercial CuO powders and is one of the highest reported photocatalytic activities to date in the CuO nanomaterials for the degradation of rhodamine B (RhB) under visible light irradiation. Such a preferable photocatalytic activity is mainly attributed to the unique yolk-shelled structure, which can enable higher multiple light reflections and scattering between the outer spherical shell and the interior core compared with commercial CuO powders, to provide a more efficient way to enhance light-harvesting efficiency.

Template-free synthesis of Mn2+ doped hierarchical CuS yolk–shell microspheres for photocatalytic reduction of Cr(vi)

“…[25][26][27] And the simultaneous presence of inner and outer surfaces leads to a relatively large specific surface area, which is expected to increase the number of accessible active sites significantly, and ultimately enhance the surface reaction. [28][29][30] Many typical semiconductor materials, such as TiO 2 , 31 MoS 2 , 32 CuO, 33 WO 3 34 and C 3 N 4 , 35,36 have been reported to be applied in the photocatalytic field due to their special structure. Various synthetic routes have been employed to fabricate yolk-shell structures, including the hard-template method, soft-template method, and hydrothermal and solvothermal methods.…”

ImageDataExtractor: A Tool To Extract and Quantify Data from Microscopy Images

“…It is a simple process where any contour featuring two or more vertices intersecting the image borders or scale bar region are eliminated from the master list of identified particles. The effect of performing this correction in ImageDataExtractor is illustrated in Figure 14 using the running example 22 used throughout this paper.…”

“…The elliptical conic section would thus be determined to represent the more correct fit to the shape of the true particle. Considering now a real example, using the running image used throughout this paper, 22 Figure 16 illustrates the effect of fitting ellipses to particles using ImageDataExtractor. This demonstrates that the fitting method is very powerful, despite its simplicity.…”

“…A detailed description of the calculations that produce these output features is now given. A typical output of ImageDataExtractor is then shown for the running example image 22 used throughout this paper.…”

One-step solvothermal synthesis of interlaced nanoflake-assembled flower-like hierarchical Ag/Cu2O composite microspheres with enhanced visible light photocatalytic properties

“…It is well known that semiconductor photocatalysts with nanometer size display excellent catalytic activity resulting from their high specic surface area and high activity. [1][2][3][4][5] However, easy agglomeration is one of the biggest drawbacks of these materials, which causes a sharp decline in the photocatalytic activity. 6 In addition, nely nanometer-sized catalysts are very difficult to recycle from the liquid system, resulting in low utilization and recontamination.…”