Design and Development of ZnO Based Nanostructures for Photocatalytic Applications

Abstract

In our recent globalized world, industrial dye effluents cause serious issues for the environment and human well-being. Major industrial sectors such as textiles, leather, and paper require effective pre-treatment of organic pollutants, before releasing them into water streams. Effective wastewater treatment is considered an urgent need for human and environmental development. Among these sectors, the refinement of water by removal of toxic organic pollutants using solar-light-driven catalysis has received a lot of attention due to its advantages and environmental value. In recent decades, advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) by semiconductor materials have been widely used for industrial pollutant degradation. The majority of semiconductor photocatalysts have a wide bandgap, which makes them only active in the UV range. We synthesized highly efficient ZnO-based nanostructure photocatalysts with dopants using simple co-precipitation and hydrothermal methods. The prepared samples were analyzed by XRD, UV-DRS, HRSEM, EDX, TEM, and XPS. The degradation of methylene blue (MB) under sunlight irradiation was used to assess the photocatalytic activity efficiency of the prepared photocatalyst. The rare earth metal Gadolinium (Gd) was used as a dopant for the preparation of Gd-ZnO (1%, 3%, and 5%) photocatalysts. The increased Gd dopant in ZnO changes the optical band gap, further increasing visible light absorption efficiency and enhancing photocatalytic activity newline