Enhanced photocatalytic of N/F-doped-NaTaO3 photocatalyst synthesized by hydrothermal method

N/F-doped NaTaO3 powders were synthesized via a hydrothermal method at 160 A degrees C. The influences of N/F co-doping on the crystal structure, morphology and photocatalytic properties of the NaTaO3 powders were investigated systematically. Rietveld refinement of X-ray diffraction data confirm that the nanoparticles of pure NaTaO3 have orthorhombic structures with Pc21n:bca and Ta2O5 can be obtained by doping N/F molar ratio (NaOH/NH4F a parts per thousand currency sign 1) with the orthorhombic P2 mm:cab space group. The NaTaO3 powders are transformed from orthorhombic Pc21n:bca into monoclinic P2/m:b space group with the NaOH/NH4F molar ratio (NaOH/NH4F > 1). The well-defined cubic block NaTaO3 single-crystalline particles with the size of 0.5 mu m are determined using TEM and grow preferentially along (101) and (010) crystal planes. The photocatalytic activities were evaluated by the degradation of Rhodamine B under UV-light irradiation. The possible mechanism is proposed to discuss the enhanced photocatalytic activity based on the increasing separation efficiency of photoinduced charge. The results illustrate that the obtained monoclinic N/F-NaTaO3 (NaOH/NH4F = 1.5/1.0) powder exhibits the best photocatalytic activity with the UV-light irradiation for 210 min.