Supercritical millifluidic reactor for the synthesis of efficient GaN nanophotocatalysts

Abstract

Here, we demonstrate the continuous synthesis of gallium nitride (GaN) nanophotocatalysts exhibiting high quantum confinement using a preheated supercritical millireactor. The GaN quantum dots (QDs) are obtained from the direct thermolysis of a single source amido complex precursor (tris(dimethyl)amido gallium(III) dimer), in anhydrous supercritical cyclohexane. The quality of the synthesized QDs is highly dependent on the chemical pathways for the single source precursor thermolysis. Through the use of numerical modeling, we designed a millifluidic reactor allowing a sufficiently high heating rate for a direct precursor thermolysis towards efficient GaN nanoparticles. The as-designed preheated supercritical flow reactor yields highly reproducible GaN QDs (optical properties, crystallite phase and morphology) at high throughput, enabling gram scale production. Eventually, the photocatalytic properties of the GaN QDs were evaluated in a direct photochemical reaction through the degradation of a dye molecule (Methyl Orange). The obtained results demonstrate the higher photocatalytic activity of such photocatalysts compared to the commercially and reference available Degussa P25.

Keywords

• Continuous flow synthesis
• Chemical engineering for reactor design
• Supercritical fluids
• Gallium nitride
• Quantum dots
• Nanophotocatalysts