Electrospinning Fabrication And Characterization Of Rare Earth Tungstate Low-Dimensional Nanomaterials

Rare earth tungstate is extensively used as matrix for photoluminescence of rare earth cations owing to its good chemical and thermal stability and high energy transfer efficiency. Nowadays, the fabrication of rare earth tungstate nanofibers and nanobelts are not found in the literatures except for rare earth tungstate powders and nano particles prepared by various method. Electrospinning has been proved to be one of the best methods to fabricate low-dimensional nanomaterials owing to its simple operation, high efficiency and reproducibility. Hence, fabrication of rare earth ions-doped La2W2O9one-dimensional nanomaterials via electrospinning remains an important and meaningful subject of study.In this dissertation, uniform spinning solutions with certain viscosity were prepared by sol-gel process using PVP and various nitrate salts as starting materials. PVP/rare earth nitrates composite nano fibers and belts were fabricated by electrospinning, and then La2W2O9, La2W2O9:RE3+(RE=Eu, Tb, Dy, Er) nanofibers and nanobelts were prepared through calcining the respective as-obtained composites fibers and belts. The samples were characterized by XRD, SEM, UV-Vis, PL and BET method. The results showed that the samples had excellent fluorescent and photocatalytic performance, the diameter range of the nanofibers and the width of the nanobelts were170-220nm and1.6-6.0μm, respectively. Possible formation mechanisms of rare earth tungstate nanostructures were also presented and some meaningful results were obtained. These findings lay certain foundation to further study of properties of rare earth ions-doped La2-W2O9low-dimensional nanomaterials.