Fabrication of Iron Oxide Nanoparticles via Submerged Photosynthesis and the Morphologies under Different Light Sources

Recently, metal oxide nanocrystallites have been synthesized through a new pathway, i.e., the submerged photosynthesis of crystallites (SPSC), and flower-like ZnO and CuO nanostructures have been successfully fabricated via this method. In this work, the SPSC process was applied for the fabrication of iron oxide and hydroxide nanoparticles. The experiments were conducted under visible light, ultraviolet light, and gamma-ray irradiation conditions and the morphologies of the obtained nanoparticles were observed and compared with that obtained without illumination. Then, the mechanism of the SPSC process for the fabrication of iron oxide nanoparticles was discussed. The results show that various kinds of morphologies of nanocrystallites were obtained on the Fe plate surface and the main morphologies are different under different conditions. For example, most FeOOH with the morphologies of nanorod and nanofiber exist by visible light irradiation; most faceted crystals of FeOOH and Fe2O3 with the morphologies of nanograular and nanorod exist by ultraviolet irradiation. In the SPSC process, light irradiation generates ·OH at the crystal tips and promote the crystallization in apical growth of FeOOH.