Abstract
Today, one of the most important problems for humanity is the pollution of the environment with various organic compounds that worsen the health of the peoples. The most dangerous pollutants are complex compounds that do not degrade under natural conditions. One way to solve the problem of pollution is to use photocatalysis to degrade harmful compounds. Zinc oxide nanostructures exhibit attractive photocatalytic and antibacterial properties due to the increased reactivity of the nanoparticle surface, which allows the efficient decomposition of organic pollutants. In this review, various methods for enhancing the photoefficiency of ZnO nanostructures are considered. It is shown that ZnO nanoparticles with specific surfaces (spherical, nanowires, nanoflowers), which are characterized by a high surface area, have a high removal rate of various pollutants. Such methods of improving the photocatalytic properties of ZnO as the band gap engineering, doping with metal/nonmetal, the combination of ZnO with other materials, formation of hybrid structures are considered.
Highlights
With the increase of industrial production and of the Earth's population, the ecological safety of mankind becomes relevant, which puts forward demands for the disposal of toxic products of industrial and agriculture production that pollutes water
It is shown that ZnO in nanoscale form is a potential photocatalytic material for photodegradation of persistent organic pollutants
ZnO nanostructures of various forms, obtained by different methods, are actively investigated as prospective photocatalysts compared to TiO2 due to its low cost of production (75 % lower than TiO2), non-toxicity and the ability to absorb more of the solar spectrum
Summary
With the increase of industrial production and of the Earth's population, the ecological safety of mankind becomes relevant, which puts forward demands for the disposal of toxic products of industrial and agriculture production that pollutes water. The band gap energy and the separation of charge carriers in semiconductor oxides depend on the size of the nanoparticles, the crystalline phase and the texture This means that the methods of synthesis ZnO nanostructures determine the efficiency of photocatalysis. There are various methods for the synthesis of ZnO nanostructures, among which the synthesis of ZnO nanomaterials based on liquid solutions is the simplest and least energy consuming With this direction of synthesis, the morphology of nanostructures can be controlled by manipulating experimental factors such as the type of solvents, starting materials and reaction conditions [17]. The choice of ZnO-photocatalists synthesis method mainly determined by the possibility to obtain ZnO nanostructures with desired size and morphology to be used in selected photocatalytic applications It should consider the reproducibility of the process and cost of initial components
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