Preparation of mesoporous magnetic Fe2O3 nanoparticle and its application for organic dyes removal

Mesoporous magnetic Fe2O3 nanoparticles with different crystalline structure were facile prepared by environmental friendly one step pyrolysis method without any templates or surfactants. The product was characterized by means of XRD, N-2 adsorption-desorption, SEM, TEM and VSM. And the photocatalytic activities of mesoporous Fe2O3 nanoparticles were also studied for degradation of organic dyes in aqueous solution. Results show that as prepared mesoporous gamma-Fe2O3 is a superparamagnetic material, mesoporous alpha-Fe2O3 also appears a stronger magnetic property. Some parameters of mesoporous Fe2O3 nanoparticles, such as specific surface areas, pore diameters, pore volumes and saturation magnetizations are as follows: gamma-Fe2O3, 105.8 m(2)/g, 3.1 nm, 0.227 cm(3)/g and 32.0 emu/g; alpha-Fe2O3, 16.0 m(2)/g, 2.7 nm, 0.118 cm(3)/g and 19.5 emu/g. Furthermore, as-prepared mesoporous Fe2O3 nanoparticles have certain photocatalytic activities so that the methyl orange in model waste water could be removed completely under visible light irradiation, catalysts could be repeatedly recovered by an external magnetic field. In a word, this simple template-free preparation method of mesoporous magnetic nanomaterials is beneficial to large-scale production, and is a promising preparation method. (c) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.