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Synthesis of sea-urchin-like Fe3O4/SnO2 heterostructures and its application for environmental remediation by removal of p-chlorophenol

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Abstract

The novel hierarchical sea-urchin-like Fe3O4/SnO2 heterostructures with SnO2 nanorod arrays grown on Fe3O4 nanoparticles were fabricated via a SnO2-seeded heteroepitaxial growth of SnO2 nanorod arrays on Fe3O4 nanoparticles. Moreover, the Fe3O4/SnO2 heterostructures showed notable photocatalytic degradation compared with the pure SnO2 in aqueous solution. The degradation reached 89% in 5 h. The remarkable improvement in photocatalytic efficiency was ascribed to larger specific surface area introducing more active sites. In addition, the decline in degradation efficiency of p-chlorophenol is not more than 11.4% after recycling for seven times in accordance with practice which indicates the excellent repeated availability. The enhanced photocatalytic performance and features that can be easily recovered and separated make Fe3O4/SnO2 have great potential application in the environmental remediation.

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Funding

This study was funded by the State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse Foundation (No. PCRRF17029), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21471114) and the State Major Research Plan (973) of China (No. 2011CB932404).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Chemical Science and Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, 200092, China

    Jing Li, Yun Chen, Qingsheng Wu, Jiao Wu & Yuanyuan Xu

  2. Shanghai Key Lab of Chemical Assessment and Substainability, Shanghai, 200092, China

    Jing Li, Yun Chen & Qingsheng Wu

Authors
  1. Jing Li
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  2. Yun Chen
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  3. Qingsheng Wu
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  4. Jiao Wu
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  5. Yuanyuan Xu
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Yun Chen or Qingsheng Wu.

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The authors declared that they have no conflicts of interest to this work. We declare that we have no financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that can inappropriately influence our work, and there is no professional or other personal interest of any nature or kind in any product, service and/or company that could be construed as influencing the position presented in, or the review of, the manuscript entitled.

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Li, J., Chen, Y., Wu, Q. et al. Synthesis of sea-urchin-like Fe3O4/SnO2 heterostructures and its application for environmental remediation by removal of p-chlorophenol. J Mater Sci 54, 1341–1350 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-018-2899-7

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