Fabrication and photocatalytic activity of YMn2O5 nanoparticles

In this work, a polyacrylamide gel route is introduced to synthesize YMn2O5 nanoparticles. It is demonstrated that high-quality YMn2O5 nanoparticles with a uniform size and spherical shape can be prepared using different chelating agents. However, the average particle size of the products is found to have a dependence on the choice of the chelating agent. The sample prepared using citric acid as the chelating agent has an average particle size of similar to 45 nm, while the sample prepared by using the chelating agent EDTA has a particle size centered around 70 nm. The optical energy bandgap of the citric acid- and EDTA-resulted samples is obtained, from optical absorption measurements, to be 1.21 and 1.17 eV, respectively. The photocatalytic experiments reveal that the as-prepared YMn2O5 nanoparticles exhibit an interesting photocatalytic activity for oxidative decomposition of methyl red under ultraviolet and visible-light irradiation. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.