Room-temperature template-free synthesis of dumbbell-like SrSO4 with hierarchical architecture

Novel dumbbell-like SrSO4 with hierarchical architecture was fabricated with a facile template-free aqueous solution method at room temperature. The crystallographic morphology of SrSO4 products depends mainly on the pH value of the reaction solution. The SrSO4 products exhibit a dumbbell-like hierarchical architecture at pH=3 and 5, and have a tablet-like crystallographic morphology at pH=1 when keeping other reaction parameters unchanged. The dumbbell-like SrSO4 synthesized at pH=3 has a length of 8–14 μm, and is composed of numerous well-aligned single crystalline nanoplates with an average width of 140 nm and a length of 0.7–1 μm. The Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) surface area of the crystallized SrSO4 products is about 2.8 m2 g−1. A formation mechanism is proposed for the evolution process of dumbbell-like SrSO4 with hierarchical architecture.