Hydrothermal Processing-Assisted Synthesis of Nanocrystalline YFeO3 and its Visible-Light Photocatalytic Activity

The single phase perovskite YFeO3 nanoparticles were synthesized by successive hydrothermal processing and high temperature calcination. The prepared YFeO3 products were characterized by powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectra (FTIR), thermal analysis, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) surface area measurement and UVvisible diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS). It was found that the single phase YFeO3 can be obtained through the calcination of hydrothermally processed YFeO3 precursors at 800 °C, and the resulting product has a spherical shape and uniform size distribution. The prepared nanocrystalline YFeO3 has an optical band gap of 2.37 eV, and exhibits strong visible-light absorption. The photocatalytic experiment indicates that the prepared YFeO3 nanoparticles are highly visible-light active for decomposition of methylene blue.