Synthesis and characterization of high-purity silica nanosphere from rice husk.

The work reports the synthesis, characterization, and the properties of high-purity silica nanospheres from low-cost rice husk. Primarily, the rice husk was washed with distilled water (DW) and subjected to acid leaching to remove the impurities. The treated rice husk was annealed at different temperatures (620 and 900 degrees C) for varied time periods to achive the desirable silica nanospheres. The annealing temperature and time considerably affected the properties of the synthesized silica nanospheres. The morphology studies confirmed that the size of nanospheres were of approximately 50-60 nm. The photoluminesence studies revealed that the synthesized silica nanospheres showed less structural defects and good optical properties. On the basis of the formation and the characterization of silica nanospheres a possible mechanism was suggested. Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) analysis confirmed that the synthesized silica nanospheres contained approximately 99.93% purity.