Preparation, Characterization And Application Of O-And1-dimensional Conductive Nanomaterials

Zinc oxide nanomaterial is an inexpensive n-type semiconductor and has a hexagonalwurtzite structure. It has a direct band gap of3.3~3.6eV and exciton binding energy of60meV. ZnO has been widely used with its high brightness, toxic, chemical stability, and lowcost of production. AZO is considered to be a promising material due to its highconductivity, good transparency, and low cost. In this work, the AZO powders wereprepared by a coprecipitation method. Compared with these techniques, the coprecipitationhas several advantages such as homogeneous, simplicity, safety, large-scale synthesis,economy and environmental-benign. Additionally, the electrical property of AZOnanopowders was studied, and the AZO powder was applied in photodegradation oforganic pollutant and investigated the photocatalytic activity. The contents and results areas follows:(1) Preparation of conductive nanomaterials: AZO powders were prepared by usingZnSO4and Al2(SO4)3as the raw materials. A mixed alkali solution of NaOH and Na2CO3was the precipitant. The obtained powders were characterized using XPS, XRD, SEM,DLS, TEM, TGA, FT-IR and the resistivity of AZO powders was tested on a four-pointprobe resistivity measurement system. The results showed that the prepared AZO has ahexagonal structure of ZnO and preferential growth along the c-axis direction. Under thebest conditions, the resistivity of prepared AZO was1.82×10-3Ω cm.(2) Photocatalytic activity of AZO powder: The powder with post-sintering undernigron was used as catalyst to degradate MO. We studied the influences of Alconcentration, pH, MO contentration, with and without bubbling air, and type of dye on thephotocatalytic activity of AZO.