LAUSR

Convenient and economic recycling of the environmental solid waste is one of the most essential and challenging issues for the sustainable development of modern society. In this work, for the first time, a chemical solution transportation method has been developed to convert iron oxides and related rust into (photo)electroactive hematite films on a conductive F-doped SnO2 substrate in a hydrothermal system. We found that the zeta potential of the substrate and the precursor particles could be modulated by controlling the NaNO3 electrolyte concentration. The decrease of the positive surface charge densities caused less adsorption of Fe(C2O4)33– intermediates on the iron oxide precursors, while the intermediate adsorption at the F-SnO2 substrate increased relatively. As a result, the small hematite nanocrystals were deposited on the substrate through an island nucleation mechanism, which transferred into a continuous dense hematite film with transportation time increase. These hematite films exhibited high ...