Abstract
Lanthanum (La)-doped zinc oxide nanoparticles were synthesized with different La concentrations by employing a gel combustion method using poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA). The as-synthesized photocatalysts were characterized using various techniques, including X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDX), photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy, and UV–visible absorption spectroscopy. The average size of ZnO nanoparticles decreased from 34.3 to 10.3 nm with increasing concentrations of La, and the band gap, as evaluated by linear fitting, decreased from 3.10 to 2.78 eV. Additionally, it was found that the photocatalytic activity of doped samples, as investigated by using methyl orange dye under visible lights, improved in response to the increase in La concentration. The decomposition of methyl orange reached 85.86% after 150 min in visible light using La0.1Zn0.9O as the photocatalyst.
Highlights
Among n-type semiconductors, zinc oxide is known for its advantageous characteristics, including a wide direct band gap (3.27 eV), large exciton binding energy, high optical gain at room temperature, great saturation velocity, piezoelectricity, and pyroelectricity
The results showed that doped materials had substantially enhanced photocatalytic efficiency and that 2% La was the optimal amount of doping required to achieve peak rhodamine B (RhB) degradation
Transmission electron micrographs showed that the synthesized samples had spherical morphology and that particle size was inversely proportional to La molar percentage
Summary
Among n-type semiconductors, zinc oxide is known for its advantageous characteristics, including a wide direct band gap (3.27 eV), large exciton binding energy (about 60 meV), high optical gain at room temperature, great saturation velocity, piezoelectricity, and pyroelectricity. Zinc oxide is non-toxic, biocompatible, and simple and inexpensive to synthesize [1]. These properties of zinc oxide make it an important II-VI semiconductor. Due to a myriad of versatile applications in technical manufacturing, cosmetics, and the pharmaceutical industry, zinc oxide nanomaterials, such as nanoparticles or zinc oxide-based semiconductors, have been extensively studied [2,3]. ZnO, when modified, could be utilized as a base material for diluted magnetic semiconductors [11], gas sensors [12,13], and photocatalysts [14,15,16,17]
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