Abstract
Well-crystalline hematite (alpha-Fe2O3) nanoparticles were synthesized through facile solution-phase process at 90 degrees C. The synthesized nanoparticles were characterized using several techniques which confirmed that the prepared nanoparticles are well-crystalline, grown in very high density and possessing rhombohedral alpha-Fe2O3 crystal structure. Further, the prepared nanoparticles were used as efficient scaffold for photocatalytic and sensing applications. In order to investigate the photocatalytic performances of as-synthesized nanoparticles, the sample was subjected to photocatalytic degradation of methyl orange (MO) under UV light illumination. A complete photocatalytic degradation of MO dye occurred in 135 min in presence of 0.2 g of alpha-Fe2O3 nanoparticles. The nanoparticles were further used as an effective electron mediator to fabricate hydroquinone (HQ) chemical sensor in aqueous media. The fabricated HQ sensor based on alpha-Fe2O3 nanoparticles exhibited reproducible sensitivity of similar to 7.512 mA mM(-1) cm(-2), detection limit of similar to 3 mM and response time of 10 s. The observed results revealed that simply prepared hematite nanomaterials are promising candidates for the photocatalytic and chemical sensing applications.