Development of novel metal oxide films deposited by solution precursor thermal spray for environmental and energy applications

In terms of industrial promoting photodegradation of water pollutants, conventional routes suffer from some disadvantage, like multi-step, long duration and etc. “Solution Precursor Plasma Spray” (SPPS) process featured with rapid one-step and direct-formation of films exhibited supertitles, indicating high-interest in research and application prospects. Herein, hierarchical ZnO and its related composite films were developed, which composed with obvious well-shaped nanostructures by SPPS, instead of classic “splats” or “spherical particles”. For the pure ZnO films, after studying the influences from different spraying parameters, the potential formation mechanism of nanostructures is inferred. Consequently, the morphologies and orientation of nanostructures (i.e. nanorods, nanowires and etc.) are capable to be tailored, forming different hierarchical structures, e.g. Aloe-era like and etc. For ZnO related composite films, their bandgaps and morphologies are sensitive to additional ratio and injection strategies, respectively. ZnO based nanolaminate and ZnO nanorods coupled films were deposited. Thanks to these better morphologies, Orange II dye was completely degraded within 2h under UV light and was removed 85% under visible light, exhibiting enhanced performance compared to previous film-formed photocatalysts. Furthermore, our attempts bring more opportunities for “SPPS” route, since these hierarchical metal oxide films are favorable for many functional fields.