Vertically Aligned Interlocked Tungsten Oxide Nanosheet Thin Film for Photocatalytic Application: Effect of Deposition Cycles

In this work, vertically aligned interlocked tungsten oxide (WO3) nanosheets are deposited on non-conducting substrates using the modified chemical solution deposition (MCSD) method. The number of deposition cycles is varied to tune the physicochemical properties of WO3 thin films. The WO3 thin films exhibit an orthorhombic crystal structure with a preferred orientation along the (111) plane. The WO3 thin film shows the vertically aligned interlocked nanosheet morphology with a change in the lateral dimensions upon varying the number of deposition cycles. All the WO3 thin films exhibited strong visible light harvesting characteristics in the 510–530 nm wavelength range. The WO3 thin films are used for the visible-light-active photocatalytic degradation of organic molecules such as methylene blue (MB), rhodamine B (Rh B) and tetracycline hydrochloride (TC). The optimized WO3 thin film shows maximum photocatalytic degradation performance of 92, 89 and 87