Development of mesoporous iron oxides and couplings with Ni and Co for degradation of contaminants in aqueous media.

Abstract

In this work are shown the advances reached in the synthesis and characterization of nanostructures based on mesoporous iron oxides, as well as their couples with Ni and Co. These nanostructures are designed with the aim of developing adequate photoactivity under UVA-Vis radiation to form oxidizing radical species capable of degrading organic pollutants. Moreover, it is expected the development of specific magnetic properties which would facilitate the solids recovery and reuse. Here, the presented method of synthesis is "hard-templating", which involves the use of a mesoporous matrix like SBA-15 as a template to the formation of the mesoporous structure. In this way, after selectively eliminating the template, the obtained solids would show a structure corresponding to the inverse replica of its porous structure. Finally, the structural and optical properties of oxides were determined by N2 physisorption, x-ray diffraction (XRD) and diffuse reflectance UV-Vis spectroscopy (DR UV-Vis). The magnetic properties were measured by vibrating sample magnetometry (VSM).