Photocatalytic performance of single crystal ZnO nanorods and ZnO nanorods films under natural sunlight

Abstract

To solve the low catalytic activity and recycling difficulty of ZnO nanomaterials, a simple and large-scale synthesized method was used to prepare single crystalline ZnO nanorods with visible light response, and then ZnO membrane was fabricated using carbon fiber (CF) cloth as support. The resultant ZnO nanorods were carriedout with X-ray diffraction (XRD), Scanning electron microscope (SEM), Transmission electron microscope (TEM), Raman spectra, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Ultraviolet spectrophotometer, and fluorescence spectrum. The experimental results display that the prepared ZnO nanorods own single crystalline structure and outstanding photocatalytic performance, which the removal time of all RhB is 15 min at UV light, 60 min at visible light and 100 min at natural sunlight, respectively. Moreover, ZnO nanorod membrane can completely remove RhB within 6 h under natural sunlight, meaning that the synthesized ZnO nanorods and ZnO nanorod membrane have potential industrial application prospect.