Enhanced Photocatalytic Performance of Chromium Doped Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles

Abstract

Pure and chromium doped ZnO nanoparticles were successfully synthesized by eco-friendly and cost effective sol–gel technique. Structural, morphological and optical properties of pure and Cr doped ZnO nanoparticles were analyzed by X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscope, and UV–vis spectroscopic techniques, respectively. The crystallite size of pure ZnO nanoparticles were observed to decrease from 29 to 24 nm as dopant concentration was increased to 3 %. Band gap of pure ZnO nanoparticles were also observed to decrease from 3.5 to 3.37 eV with increase in dopant concentration. The photo-catalytic degradation of methyl blue dye under UV irradiation was examined for synthesized samples. The chromium doped zinc oxide nanoparticles were found to give enhanced photo degradation efficiency (75.5 %) than the pure zinc oxide nanoparticles (51.2 %).