CHIBUOKEM, MICHAEL ONYEDIKACHI and Covenant University, Theses (2022) DEVELOPMENT OF MIXED CHALCOGENIDE HETEROSTRUCTURE NANOMATERIALS AS POTENTIAL PHOTOCATALYSTS FOR WASTE WATER TREATMENT. Masters thesis, COVENANT UNIVERSITY.
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Abstract
Water pollution is one of the world’s biggest issues today. Several methods of purification have been put in place to curb this issue and more are still being researched upon. Photo and electro catalysis are just two of the methods discovered that can be used in the purification of water. The synthesis of catalysts that could speed up the rate of these reactions are of utmost importance. Chalcogenide heterostructures have been researched upon over the last few years based on the interesting band gap that is within the semi-conductor band gap range (1-3 eV). In this research work, eight nanoparticles were synthesised by varying different reaction conditions. The band gap of the synthesized nanomaterials ranged from 1.93 to 2.86 eV. The chalcogenide heterostructures synthesised are Ag8SnS6/FeS, AgSnS2/FeS and CuxSnSey/FeSe. This was confirmed by the XRD analysis that revealed the different phases; the orthorhombic phase and the cubic phase under different synthesis conditions. The TEM analysis also showed that the nanomaterials formed where mostly nanocubes and with a little bit of nanosheets ranging from 28.83 nm ± 1.67 nm to 134.03 nm ± 3.51 nm. The factors varied were the temperature, the mole ratio of the ternary to binary material and the caping agents. The two capping agents used were citric acid and glycerol. The co-precipitation method was used to synthesise the nanoparticles. FTIR and UV-Vis spectrophotometric analyses were carried out on the resulting nanoparticles. The FTIR showed that the nanoparticles had a good surface functionalization confirming the presence of functional groups like the hydroxyl (O-H) at 3396.16 cm-1 and carbonyl group (C=O) at 1712.31 cm-1, while the UV-Vis which was measured over a range of 250 to 1000 nm showed broad absorbance over 420 to 800 nm confirming that the nanoparticles had some optical properties. This showed that the nanoparticles would have a good photocatalytic application.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Masters) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Chalcogenide, Nanoparticle, Photocatalyst, Heterostructure, Co-precipitation. |
| Subjects: | Q Science > Q Science (General) Q Science > QD Chemistry |
| Divisions: | Faculty of Engineering, Science and Mathematics > School of Chemistry |
| Depositing User: | AKINWUMI |
| Date Deposited: | 20 Sep 2022 12:22 |
| Last Modified: | 20 Sep 2022 12:22 |
| URI: | http://eprints.covenantuniversity.edu.ng/id/eprint/16183 |
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