LAUSR

The present research article is about the visible light photocatalytic degradation of Methylene Blue (MB) by aqueous heterogeneous medium containing orthorhombic phase of nanocrystalline (NCs) molybdenum oxide (MoO3). The two different oxidation forms of molybdenum oxides formed at annealing temperatures of 90 °C and 400 °C are Mo17O47 and α-MoO3 nanocrystals which are found to exhibit good photocatalytic activity. In the present work, a simple conventional wet chemical method has been used to synthesize molybdenum oxide nanoparticles (NPs) by combining ammonium heptamolybdate tetrahydrate (AHMT) with capped sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) and ethanol solution. The orthorhombic phase is present in the samples annealed at 90 °C, 200 °C, 300 °C, and 400 °C, respectively, and it is found that the orthorhombic phase is a highly stable phase in both Mo17O47 and α-MoO3. The photocatalytic activity of the synthesized samples is estimated by using MB degradation. The photocatalytic behaviors of the synthesized Mo17O47 and α-MoO3 nanostructures have been studied using the color degradation of MB. It is found that Mo17O47 and α-MoO3 with nanorods like structure has the potential to degrade the MB dye and for a time of 90 min, the degradation efficiency of Mo17O47 and MoO3 are 56.15% and 95.78%, respectively.