Published in

Taylor and Francis Group, Science and Technology of Advanced Materials, 1(17), p. 177-187, 2016

DOI: 10.1080/14686996.2016.1165583

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

Room-temperature synthesis of three-dimensional porous ZnO@CuNi hybrid magnetic layers with photoluminescent and photocatalytic properties

This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

Full text: Download

Green circle
Preprint: archiving allowed
Green circle
Postprint: archiving allowed
Red circle
Published version: archiving forbidden
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

Altres ajuts: M. Guerrero acknowledges the support of the Secretary for Universities and Research of the Government of Catalonia and the COFUND Programme of the Marie Curie Actions of the 7th R&D Framework Programme of the European Union for the ‘Beatriu de Pinos’ contract [2013 BP-B 00077] ; A facile synthetic approach to prepare porous ZnO@CuNi hybrid films is presented. Initially, magnetic CuNi porous layers (consisting of phase separated CuNi alloys) are successfully grown by electrodeposition at different current densities using H₂ bubbles as a dynamic template to generate the porosity. The porous CuNi alloys serve as parent scaffolds to be subsequently filled with a solution containing ZnO nanoparticles previously synthesized by sol-gel. The dispersed nanoparticles are deposited dropwise onto the CuNi frameworks and the solvent is left to evaporate while the nanoparticles impregnate the interior of the pores, rendering ZnO-coated CuNi 3D porous structures. No thermal annealing is required to obtain the porous films. The synthesized hybrid porous layers exhibit an interesting combination of tunable ferromagnetic and photoluminescent properties. In addition, the aqueous photocatalytic activity of the composite is studied under UV−visible light irradiation for the degradation of Rhodamine B. The proposed method represents a fast and inexpensive approach towards the implementation of devices based on metal-semiconductor porous systems, avoiding the use of post-synthesis heat treatment steps which could cause deleterious oxidation of the metallic counterpart, as well as collapse of the porous structure and loss of the ferromagnetic properties.