Waste from textile and paint industries often contains organic dyes such as methylene blue as pollutants. Photocatalysis is an efficient means of reducing such pollution, and molybdenum trioxide (MoO₃) catalyzes this degradation. Researchers from Bangalore, India, led by C. N. R. Rao now report no less than four methods to produce nanosheets made of very few layers of MoO₃. This material is more efficient as a photocatalyst than bulk MoO₃, they write in Chemistry—An Asian Journal.

The n-type semiconductor molybdenum trioxide is used widely in heterogeneous catalysis. The Indian team prepared nanosheets of MoO₃ by oxidation of MoS2nanosheets, by using graphene oxide as a template, and by intercalation with LiBr into the bulk material or its ultrasonication. When used as a photocatalyst in the degradation of methylene blue, a heterocyclic aromatic dye, the researchers found few-layered MoO₃ to afford nearly complete degradation of the dye in less than 10 minutes, whereas only about one-third of the dye was degraded during this period with the bulk compound.

“As MoO₃ holds great potential in applications ranging from gas sensing to energy storage, our study will likely spur further research on few-layer MoO₃,” says Rao. Indeed, further results reported in their study suggest that a composite of this material with a borocarbonitride is promising as an electrode material for supercapacitors. It will be interesting to see what is coming next for this intriguing few-layer nanostructure.

Synthesis, Characterization, and Properties of Few-Layer MoO₃

Source: Wiley