Morphological modulation of urchin-like Zn2SnO4/SnO2 hollow spheres and their applications as photocatalysts and quartz crystal microbalance measurements

In this paper, we successfully synthesized urchin-like hollow sphere shaped ZnSn(OH)(6) by a 2-step hydrothermal synthesis process. During the synthesis process, the sphere shape was used as a template and formed based on Pearson's hard and soft acid and base (HSABs) theory. The rod shape on the outside of sphere is SnO2, it was characterized by energy dispersive spectrometer (EDS), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Raman spectrum. The crystal phase of ZnSn(OH)(6) with different shape changes to Zn2SnO4/SnO2 through annealing process at 800 degrees C. Finally, we measured photocatalyst and quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) based on the advantages of composite material and morphology-modulation. As a result, urchin-like hollow sphere shaped Zn2SnO4/SnO2 achieved the best efficiency in all applications. (C) 2018 Published by Elsevier B.V.