A novel solar driven photocatalyst : well-aligned anodic WO3 nanotubes

Abstract EN

Well-aligned anodic tungsten trioxide (WO3) nanotubes were successfully synthesized by anodization of W foil at 40 V in a bath with electrolyte composed of 1 M of sodium sulphate (Na2SO4) and 0.5 wt% ammonium fluoride (NH4F).

The effect of electrochemical anodization times on the formation mechanism of anodic WO3 nanotubular structure was investigated.

It was found that minimum of 15 min is required for completing transformation from W foil to WO3 nanotubular structure with an average diameter of 50 nm and length of 500 nm.

The photocatalytic ability of the samples was evaluated by degradation of methyl blue (MB) dye.

The results indicate that the surface morphology of anodic WO3 affected the photocatalytic MB degradation significantly under solar illumination.