Photocatalysis activity of ZnO nanorods arrays prepared via hydrothermal

Abstract

In the present work, ZnO nanorods have been synthetized via hydrothermal method. The solution temperature was varied in order to control the nanorods alignment. X diffraction rays (XRD) analysis and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) observations results confirm the nanorods morphology change caused by the solution temperature variation. The variation of the solution temperature engenders the evolution of the nanorods morphology from well aligned nanorods at low temperature towards entangled nanorods nanostructure. The photocatalysis activity of the realized nanostructures was tested for the degradation of methylene blue dye. The results indicate that the ZnO nanorods prepared at higher temperature exhibits a superior photocatalysis activity due its entangled structure that offers larger reactive sites with the surrounding aqueous solution in one hand and on the other hand, to the low recombination of the photo generated electrons, due to the absence of zinc vacancy defects (Vzn) deduced from photoluminescence measurements.