Synthesis of floriated ZnFe₂O₄ with porous nanorod structures and its photocatalytic hydrogen production under visible light

Floriated ZnFe₂O₄ with porous nanorod structures were successfully synthesized via mild hydrothermal and calcination processes by using cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTABr) as a template-directing reagent. The resulting ZnFe₂O₄ was characterized by X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS) and nitrogen adsorption measurement. It was found that the floriated ZnFe₂O₄ nanostructures were composed of porous nanorods with an average length of 122 nm and diameter of 29 nm. The obtained ZnFe₂O₄ with a bandgap of ∼1.94 eV was firstly used as a visible-light-driven photocatalyst for hydrogen production, and exhibits remarkable photostability in an aqueous suspension by using CH ₃OH as a sacrificial reagent. Moreover, the possible photo-reaction mechanism for the hydrogen production from CH₃OH aqueous solution was proposed for better understanding the photocatalytic behavior of ZnFe ₂O₄ without Pt-loading.