A facile and one step synthesis of large surface area SnO2 nanorods and its photocatalytic activity

High quality single crystalline SnO 2 nanorods (NRs) were successfully synthesized by using novel microwave-irradiation method by using PEG-400 as surfactant. Powder X-ray diffraction (XRD) results reveals that the SnO 2 crystalline with tetragonal rutile type structure (space group P42/mnm) have formed directly during the microwave irradiation process. The results are good in agreement with the standard JCPDS data (file no. 41-1445). Transmission electron microscope (TEM) images showed that NRs of about 460–530 nm in length and 55–75 nm in diameter. UV–visible diffusion reflectance spectroscopic (DRS) studies exposed the band gap energies of SnO 2 was found to be 3.27 and 2.58 eV for without and with PEG respectively. The photocatalytic activity study showed that the as-synthesized SnO 2 NRs were superior photocatalytic performance for the degradation of methylene blue (MB) and rhodamine B (RhB) dye solutions. The samples were further characterized by photoluminescence and energy dispersive spectra analysis.