Preparation Of ?-Zirconium Phosphate Nanomaterials Of Different Sizes And Research On Its Photocatalytic Performance

a-zirconium phosphate(a-ZrP)is a novel multi-functional inorganic material with typical layered structure,because of its stable physical-chemical properties and some unique characteristics like excellent ion exchange capacity,a-ZrP and its derivatives have been widely studied as ion exchanger,adsorbent and applied in material chemistry.As a semiconductor,the photocatalytic property of a-ZrP has given rise to a wide concern as well.However,most of these studies focus on amorphous zirconium phosphate or block-shaped a-ZrP.It's well known that the synthetic approaches carried out affect the crystal structure,energy band structure,morphology and particle size of catalysts,thus have a great impact on the photocatalytic property.Herein,in this paper,the effect of synthetic approaches to the photocatalytic of a-ZrP crystals was explored.The main content lists as above:(1)Two traditional synthetic approaches,Refluxing Method(R)and Oxalic Acid Method(OA),and a mild novel approach of Minimal Solvent Method(MS)were carried out to obtain oval a-ZrP nanoparticles,a-ZrP plates and rounded ?-ZrP nanoparticles with controlled crystallite size and different particle size distribution.a-ZrP crystals were characterized by XRD,SEM,IR,BET and other methods.It was found that the crystallinity,crystallite size and particle size distribution of a-ZrP crystals made by three approaches separately are improved with the improving of synthesis time and temperature.The order of crystallinity,crystallite size and particle size distribution is:OA>R>MS,and the order of adsorption property and photocatalytic property is MS>R>OA.We tested the photocatalytic property of all the a-ZrP crystals,the results showed that a-ZrP crystals formed by MS Method own superior photocatalytic property.Besides,a-ZrP crystals fonned by MS Method in 80? for 12 hours exhibited the best photocatalytic activity among all a-ZrP crystals.According to the experiments of photocatalytic efficiency,99.60%of Rhodamine B was degraded within 70 minutes under ultraviolet irradiation.(2)To improve the photocatalytic activity of a-ZrP crystals,C3N4-ZrP nanocomposites were synthesized by a mild solvent evaporation method.XRD?SEM?IR?EDS?XPS?PL and some other apparatus were used to examine the crystal structure,morphology and optical properties of these nanocomposites.The results showed that with the increasing of C3N4-ZrP mass ratio,the particle dispersion of the sample increased.It was found that there were some heterojunctions between a-ZrP nanoparticles and g-C3N4 nanosheets.According to the experiments of photocatalytic efficiency,the photodegradation rate of all the C3N4-ZrP nanocomposites system reaches 90%within 18 minutes.However,the photocatalytic activity increased at first and then decreased with the increasing of C3N4-ZrP mass ratio.Among them,the C3N4-ZrP 2:1 nanocomposite owned the best photocatalytic activity,which had a degradation of 99.95%within 18 minutes.