Hydrothermal Method Preparation of Flower-Like Ce-Doped ZnO as an Efficient Photocatalyst

Abstract

Well-crystalline flower-like Ce-doped ZnO were synthesized by facile and low-cost hydrothermal method. The prepared samples were characterized by a variety of characterization techniques such as X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometer (FT-IR), UV-visible spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) combined with energy dispersive X-ray diffraction (EDX), to study the crystal structure, optical properties, surface morphology and chemical composition. It was observed from XRD and FT-IR results that synthesized powder had hexagonal wurtzite structure. The photocatalytic activities of the prepared samples were evaluated by photocatalytic degradation of methyl orange (MO) and Rhodamine B (RhB) under UV light irradiation. The results showed that the Ce-doped ZnO photocatalyst with 0.5% cerium exhibited highest photocatalytic activity compared to other samples. The enhanced photocatalytic activity could be attributed to inhibition of the electron-hole pair’s recombination.