Casein templated synthesis of porous perovskite and its application in visible-light photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue

Abstract Porous LaMnO3 perovskite was successfully fabricated by biotemplate method utilizing casein as template to control the morphology. The impact of casein template on the phase structure, microstructure and morphologies of the samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray Energy dispersive spectrometer (EDS). The photocatalytic degradation test of methylene blue revealed that the biotemplated porous LaMnO3 showed superior performance in comparison to the bulk LaMnO3 particles, which was probably due to its small crystallite size, porous structure, large surface area and narrow band gap.