Exploring the Effect of Morphologies of Fe(III) Metal-Organic Framework MIL-88A(Fe) on the Photocatalytic Degradation of Rhodamine B

Metal-organic frameworks built from [Fe-3(mu(3)-O)(COO)(6)] clusters and fumaric acid ligand, the so-called MIL-88 A(Fe) is a well-known environment-friendly promising material for many applications. In this paper, three different morphologies of MIL-88 A(Fe) such as rod, diamond and spindle have been synthesized separately by reacting FeCl3 center dot 6H(2)O and fumaric acid in 1 : 1 metal-ligand stoichiometric ratio using two different solvents such as water and DMF via hydrothermal method. The morphology of the products and their particle sizes were obtained using SEM and three distinct morphologies viz., rod, diamond and spindle were clearly distinguished by TEM. All the three samples were characterized by FT-IR, PXRD, UVDRS, PL, XPS and BET, and the effect of the morphologies of MIL-88 A(Fe) on the photocatalytic degradation of Rhodamine B (RhB) was studied under sunlight. The addition of an H(2)O(2)electron acceptor can markedly enhance the photocatalytic Rhodamine B degradation of MIL-88 A(Fe). Among these three, rod-shaped morphology of MIL-88 A(Fe) shows the higher photocatalytic effect for the degradation of Rhodamine B under sunlight due to its lower band gap, high surface area, and lower electron-hole recombination rate which enable them the transfer of electrons for the photocatalytic degradation. We found that 98% degradation of RhB in 50 min has taken place by using r-MIL-88 A(Fe) as the catalyst under sunlight.