Facile Synthesis of β-PbO2 Nanoparticles Range from 10–30 nm and their Application for Ozone Generation

β-PbO2 is an important high oxygen overpotential anode coating material. Further study on nanoscale β-PbO2 with higher performance and lower cost is a critical issue in order to develop the electrochemical ozone generator. Herein, an improved β-PbO2 nanoparticles synthesizing strategy based on the traditional Pb(OAc)4 hydrolysis method is proposed in this work, which is more scalable for industrial-scale production compared with existed nano β-PbO2 synthesizing methods. The possible mechanism of synthesizing β-PbO2 nanoparticles via Pb(OAc)4 hydrolysis was discussed for the first time. Based on the proposed mechanism, the size and morphology of the β-PbO2 nanoparticles were effectively controlled, and alternative raw material that can significantly reduce costs was developed. SEM, TEM, XRD, and XPS results indicate that pure phase β-PbO2 nanoparticles range from 10–30 nm were obtained. In addition, the use of alternative raw materials reduces the cost by 90%–95% compared to the traditional Pb(OAc)4 hydrolysis method. The β-PbO2 nanoparticles showed good ozone generation performances. The energy consumption per unit ozone of the β-PbO2 nanoparticles is reduced by 51.9% at the optimized operation condition than the reference PbO2 particles used for comparison.