Fine nanoparticles of Al–SnO2 prepared by a co-precipitation route in water/oil microemulsion

Al–SnO2 nanoparticles have been successfully synthesized by a co-precipitation route in water-in-oil microemulsion consisting of water, DBS (surfactant), 1-amyl-alcohol (assistant surfactant) and cyclohexane (oil phase). The as-synthesized products were characterized with Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) and transmission electron microscope (TEM). The results show that the particle size of Al–SnO2 is below 10 nm, while pure SnO2 is over 15 nm, which indicates that the introduction of Al can effectively prevent SnO2 from further growing up in the process of calcination. On the other hand, when the molar ratio of Al to Sn is 1:4 and the calcination temperature is 600 °C, the as-prepared Al–SnO2 nanoparticles have the lowest particle size in the experiments. In the photocatalytic degradation of phenol, the Al–SnO2 nanoparticles exhibit better activity than the pure SnO2 nanoparticles.