Fe-doped ZnO synthesized by parallel flow precipitation process for improving photocatalytic activity

Abstract

ZnO and Fe-doped ZnO photocatalysts with different molar ratio of Fe/Zn (0.25%, 0.50%, 0.75% and 1.0%) were synthesized by a parallel flow precipitation method. The structures and morphologies of as-synthesized samples were tested by the X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) surface area, respectively. The results reveal that Fe-doped ZnO has higher BET surface area than pure ZnO. XRD spectra of Fe-doped ZnO photocatalysts display merely the characteristic peaks of hexagonal wurtzite structure. The morphologies of ZnO vary from the regular hexagonal prism rod to irregular short rod and flake when Fe is introduced into ZnO particles. For degradation of RhB dye, the 0.50%Fe photocatalyst possesses the most outstanding photocatalytic performance under visible light radiation, which is more than ten times as high as the pure ZnO.