Facile and Economical Synthesis of Large Hollow Ferrites and Their Applications in Adsorption for As(V) and Cr(VI)

Unlike the previous ferrites (MFe2O4; M = Fe, Co, Zn, and Mn) solid nanospheres/nanoparticles, which were prepared by polluted solvothermal (glycol) approaches, here controllable monodisperse porous ferrites hollow nanospheres are promptly synthesized by a nontemplate hydrothermal method which has introduced an addition agent, polyacrylamide. The hollow nanospheres with different size can be prepared by varying the synthetic compositions. Scanning/transmission micros-graphs show the outside diameters of ferrite nanospheres are 180–380 nm and the shell thicknesses of that are only 20–45 nm, which could be adjusted by controlling CH3COONa concentration. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray photoelectron (XPS) spectroscopy, scanning electron (SEM) and transmission electron (TEM) microscopy, energy-dispersive spectrometer (EDS), the measurement of N2 adsorption–desorption isotherms and Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) surface area, and superconducting quantum interference device (SQID) magnetometer were adopted to analyze their phase composition, morphology, porosity, and magnetic properties, respectively. The results of controlled experiments show that citrate and polyacrylamide are vital for the phase purities and morphology of ferrites. In particular, the as-obtained samples exhibit a large adsorption capacity for the toxic solution containing As(V) and Cr(VI) ions, and the calculated result of the maximum adsorption capacity is 340 mg/g based on Langmuir model, which shows excellent As(V) and Cr(VI) ions uptake capacity in contrast to other solid nanosphere materials.