Synthesis of floriated ZnFe2O4 with porous nanorod structures and its photocatalytic hydrogen production under visible light

Floriated ZnFe2O4 with porous nanorod structures were successfully synthesized via mild hydrothermal and calcination processes by using cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTABr) as a template-directing reagent. The resulting ZnFe2O4 was characterized by X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS) and nitrogen adsorption measurement. It was found that the floriated ZnFe2O4 nanostructures were composed of porous nanorods with an average length of 122 nm and diameter of 29 nm. The obtained ZnFe2O4 with a bandgap of similar to 1.94 eV was firstly used as a visible-light-driven photocatalyst for hydrogen production, and exhibits remarkable photostability in an aqueous suspension by using CH3OH as a sacrificial reagent. Moreover, the possible photo-reaction mechanism for the hydrogen production from CH3OH aqueous solution was proposed for better understanding the photocatalytic behavior of ZnFe2O4 without Pt-loading.