Copper oxide-anchored ZnO nanoflakes for the enhanced photocatalytic degradation performance and mechanistic investigations

Abstract

An efficient CuO anchored ZnO nanoflakes were synthesized through facile wet chemistry method and the catalysts were well characterized using various sophisticated instruments. CuO nanoparticle incorporation was found to have a direct linear relationship with light absorbance. The degradation ability of the ZnO/CuO p-n junction was studied on the degradation of methyl orange. Under UV–Vis light illumination, the photocatalytic removal efficacy of methyl orange over CuO/ZnO p-n junction is up to 89%, which is greater than that of barecatalysts. The maximized photocatalytic degradation performance might be ascribed to the augmented visible light harvesting capacity and reduced the rate of photogenerated electron-hole pair recombination. The efficient photoinduced electron and hole pair charge separation upon excitation is aided by the effective formation of p-n junctions between ZnO and CuO. Based on the findings, a plausible photocatalytic mechanism for the as-synthesized CuO anchored ZnO nanoflake was proposed.