Hydrothermal synthesis of morphology-controllable Sb2O3 microstructures: Hollow spindle-like and cobblestone-like microstructures

Hollow spindle-like and cobblestone-like Sb2O3 microstructures, have been successfully synthesized via a hydrothermal method by using cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) as soft-templates. Results from XRD, SEM, TEM, Raman and BET showed that experimental parameters, such as the reaction temperature and time, played crucial roles in the respective morphological control of Sb2O3 microstructures. On the basis of these results, possible growth mechanisms for the formation of hollow spindle-like and cobblestone-like microstructures are presented and discussed.

Images in figure show the low- and high-magnification SEM images of hollow spindle-like and cobblestone-like Sb2O3 microstructures, respectively. Fig. a shows that the as-prepared product exists a great deal of uniform broken spindle-like structures in high yield, which confirms the formation of hollow structures. Fig. b shows HRSEM images of the amplified morphology of the pore about 300 nm in diameter and the surface of the sample is very rough, indicating that the microspindle is composed of many smaller homogeneous nanoparticles. Fig. c and d show that the cobblestone-like microstructure is in diameter of about 3 μm and the surface of an individual cobblestone-like Sb2O3 particle is not very smooth, covered with uneven salience.Research highlights▶ We report the fabrication of novel uniform hollow spindle-shaped and cobblestone-shaped microarchitectures by using CTAB as a soft-template in mixed solvents via a facile hydrothermal synthetic method. ▶ We have varied different reaction parameters such as the reaction temperature and time to study their effect on the size and shape of the formed Sb2O3 morphology. ▶ The possible mechanisms leading to spindle-shaped and cobblestone-shaped microarchitectures were proposed, respectively. ▶ In addition, variations of the crystal structure and morphology of the samples were systematically investigated using XRD, SEM, TEM, BET and micro-Raman spectroscopy.