文摘
Many efforts have been made in fabricating three-dimensional (3D) ordered zinc oxide (ZnO) nanostructuresdue to their growing applications in separations, sensors, catalysis, bioscience, and photonics. Here, wedeveloped a new synthetic route to 3D ZnO-based hollow microspheres by a facile solution-based methodthrough a water-soluble biopolymer (sodium alginate) assisted assembly from ZnO nanorods. The productswere characterized by X-ray diffraction, field emission scanning electron microscopy, transmission electronmicroscopy, selected area electron diffraction, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Raman and photoluminescence spectra of the ZnO-based hollow microspheres were obtained at room temperature to investigatetheir optical properties. The hollow microspheres exhibit exciting emission features with a wide band coveringnearly all the visible region. The calculated CIE (Commission Internationale d'Eclairage) coordinates are0.24 and 0.31, which fall at the edge of the white region (the 1931 CIE diagram). A possible growth mechanismof the 3D ZnO superstructures based on typical biopolymer-crystal interactions in aqueous solution istentatively proposed, which might be really interesting because of the participation of the biopolymer. Theresults show that this biopolymer-directed crystal growth and mediated self-assembly of nanocrystals mayprovide promising routes to rational synthesis of various ordered inorganic and inorganic-organic hybridmaterials with complex form and structural specialization.