Morphological evaluation of hematite nanostructures and their shape dependent photocatalytic and magnetic properties

In this investigation, we report the synthesis of various hematite nanostructures with four different morphologies using a one-step solvothermal method in the presence of oleyl amine, oleic acid, ethanol, and ethylenediamine. Magnetic measurements were used to investigate the magnetic properties of the produced nanostructures, revealing that the hematite nanostructures are superparamagnetic and the magnetisation varied with a change in the size/shape. Higher magnetization (42.2 emu g⁻¹) of hexagonal nanoparticles (10-12 nm) was attributed to a higher surface/volume ratio. The photocatalytic performance of the resultant structures was evaluated by studying the degradation of methylene blue (MB) and rhodamine B (RhB). Hexagonal-nanoparticles demonstrated up to 95 % photocatalytic activity for MB in 25 min and 30 min for RhB. This study provides a better understanding of the relationship between the nanoparticles shape and their magnetic and photocatalytic properties.