Investigation of the photocatalytic efficiency of tantalum alkoxy carboxylate-derived Ta₂O₅ nanoparticles in rhodamine B removal

• Subia Ambreen,
• Mohammad Danish,
• Narendra D. Pandey and
• Ashutosh Pandey

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 604–613, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.65

• Subia Ambreen Mohammad Danish Narendra D. Pandey Ashutosh Pandey Department of Chemistry, Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology, Allahabad, 211004, India 10.3762/bjnano.8.65 Abstract Ta2O5 nanoparticles have been synthesized from alkoxy carboxylates of tantalum via the sol–gel route

• . Tantalum alkoxides were reacted with chlorocarboxylic acids in order to lower the susceptibility hydrolysis. When these modified alkoxy carboxylates were used in the sol–gel synthesis, they yielded Ta2O5 nanoparticles of better properties than those of the alkoxide-derived Ta2O5 nanoparticles. These

• nanoparticles efficiently removed rhodamine B under UV light irradiation. Keywords: alkoxy carboxylates; band gap; dynamic light scattering (DLS); rhodamine B; scanning electron microscopy (SEM); tantalum(V) oxide (Ta2O5) nanoparticles; TEM; X-ray diffraction (XRD); Introduction Nowadays, the purification of