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NANO EXPRESS

Open Access

Synthesis and optical property of onedimensional spinel ZnMn2O4 nanorods Pan Zhang1†, Xinyong Li1,2*†, Qidong Zhao1† and Shaomin Liu2*†

Abstract Spinel zinc manganese oxide (ZnMn2O4) nanorods were successfully prepared using the previously synthesized aMnO2 nanorods by a hydrothermal method as template. The nanorods were characterized by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, UV-Vis absorption, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, surface photovoltage spectroscopy, and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The ZnMn2O4 nanorods in well-formed crystallinity and phase purity appeared with the width in 50-100 nm and the length in 1.5-2 μm. They exhibited strong absorption below 500 nm with the threshold edges around 700 nm. A significant photovoltage response in the region below 400 nm could be observed for the nanorods calcined at 650 and 800° C. Introduction Spinel is an important class of mixed-metal oxides, which has the general chemical composition of AB2O4. In recent years, mixed transition-metal oxides with spinel structure have attracted much attention, owing to their various properties such as photocatalytic [1-4], electrochemical performance [5], magnetic [6,7] properties, or being used as lithium ion batteries [8]. Mndoped ZnO has also aroused lots of interest because it had been predicted to be a room-temperature diluted magnetic semiconductor [9], which was later verified by experiments. Therefore, the Mn-Zn-O ternary systems belong to a class of interesting and useful materials in terms of their electrical and magnetic properties. As one of the important mixed transition-metal oxides with spinel structure, ZnMn 2 O 4 is a promising functional material and has become the focus of various researches owing to its potential applications. ZnMn2O4 could be used for the negative temperature coefficient thermistors on account of their unique electrical properties [10]. Ferrari and the coworkers studied the catalytic activity of zinc manganite for the reduction of NO by * Correspondence: [email protected]; [email protected] † Contributed equally 1 Key Laboratory of Industrial Ecology and Environmental Engineering and State Key Laboratory of Fine Chemical, School of Environmental Science & Technology, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, 116024, China 2 Department of Chemical Engineering, Curtin University, Perth, WA 6845, Australia Full list of author information is available at the end of the article

several types of hydrocarbons [4,11]. Those authors suggested that ZnMn2O4 was an efficient catalyst for the reduction of NO to N2, and, in all cases, its best selectivity to N2 and CO2 was at almost the maximum conversion temperature. The physical and chemical properties of nanomaterials would be strongly affected by their particle sizes and morphologies [12]. At present, a tremendous amount of comprehensive investigations are under way into the unique applications of one-dimensional (1D) nanostructures involving nanorods, nanotubes,