Solar light triggered photocatalytic performance of WO3 nanostructures; waste water treatment

Abstract

In this work, WO3 nanostructures have been synthesized through simple chemical co-precipitation method under optimized synthesis conditions. The prepared sample was characterized through XRD, Raman, FTIR, SEM, EDS, XPS, and DRS for structural, vibrational, Raman, morphological, elemental, compositional, and optical properties respectively. The detailed structural investigation has revealed the highly crystalline, single phase monoclinic structure of WO3 as demonstrated by XRD, FTIR and Raman spectroscopy results. The morphological analysis have clearly depicted nanostructures like morphology of prepared WO3 sample with average size of 10 nm. EDS and XPS results indicated the high elemental and chemical compositional purity of the synthesized nanostructures. DRS results have shown that the optical band gap energy of WO3 nanostructures lies in the visible region. The WO3 nanostructures have shown significantly high photocatalytic activity and completely degraded Methylene Blue (MB) dye in short time of 40 min under sunlight illumination.