Formation mechanism of porous rose-like WO3 and its photoresponse and stability study

WO3 materials are widely used in photocatalysis and electrocatalysis. In this work, sodium dodecyl benzene sulfonate (SDBS) was used to control the growth of H2WO4 during chemical bath deposition fabrication process. The as-prepared H2WO4 material showed a rose-like morphology and after annealing the obtained WO3 sample was porous with oxygen defects. XRD, SEM, TEM, XPS and some other method were used to characterize the samples. A possible growth mechanism was given depending on the characterization results. The addition of SDBS resulted in a simultaneous growth of plenty H2WO4 nucleus, which caused a uniform distribution. Compared with normal WO3, the as-fabricated porous rose-like WO3 showed a higher stability to photocorrosion and a narrower band gap.