Synthesis of molybdenum oxide nanoparticles by nanosecond laser ablation

Publication date: 15 January 2020Source: Materials Chemistry and Physics, Volume 240Author(s): Noe Zamora-Romero, Miguel A. Camacho-Lopez, Alfredo R. Vilchis-Nestor, Victor H. Castrejon-Sanchez, Guillermo Aguilar, Santiago Camacho-Lopez, Marco Camacho-LopezAbstractPhothermal therapy (PTT) is one of the most promising techniques to treat cancer. Finding the ideal PTT agent nanomaterial has remained a challenge and has brought the interest of several researchers. In this work, we report the synthesis of molybdenum oxide (MoOx) nanoparticles (NPs), which exhibit absorption in the biological optical window ~840 nm, by using the laser ablation of solids in liquids (LASL) technique with nanosecond (ns) pulses. A Nd:YAG laser was used to synthesize the NPs in deionized (DI) water, free of surfactants or additives, which were optically characterized by absorption spectroscopy and TEM-EDX microscopy. Semi spherical NPs with a suitable average size and shape for potential use as PTT agents were obtained by laser ablation and ablation + fragmentation. The calculated band gap is 3.1 eV, which corresponds to MoO3. Micro-Raman spectroscopy studies determined that these NPs are composed of amorphous molybdenum oxide hydrates (MoO3 · xH2O).
Source: Materials Chemistry and Physics - Category: Materials Science Source Type: research