Sol-Gel Sonochemical Triton X-100 Templated Synthesis of Fe2O3/ZnO Nanocomposites Toward Developing Photocatalytic Degradation of Organic Pollutants

Abstract

Abstract The existing work emphasizes mainly to advance the low surface features of zinc oxide (ZnO) by dispersion of Fe2O3 nanoparticles on the ZnO surface fabricated via a sol-gel route with Triton X-100 as a structure and capping agent to synthesis a novel series of Fe2O3/ZnO nanocomposites (NCs) with novel features assembling between the two nanoparticle materials. Fe2O3/ZnO is an effective semiconductor which has higher efficiency in the removal of numerous organic dyes and other pollutants. The NCs was characterized via HRTEM, XRD, FTIR, BET, RS and UV–Vis DRS. A photocatalytic performance of the fabricated Fe2O3/ZnO nanocomposites was estimated by continual degradation of the methylene blue dye (MB) as an organic pollutant in aqueous solution. The comparison between pure ZnO (NPs) and Fe2O3/ZnO (NCs) show advanced photocatalytic performance under both UV and sunlight irradiation. The impact of several parameters, for example, dopant contents, photocatalytic dosage, pH, chemical oxygen demand (COD) and point of zero charge (PZC) were evaluated and discussed. In addition, the protective species’ role was estimated via a radical scavenger route. The photo-degradation data shown that the Fe2O3/ZnO (10 wt%) semiconductor is the fit photocatalyst between the fabricated semiconductors for the methylene blue dye (MB) degradation. The intensity reduction peak of UV emission and the intensity increment of visible emission were led to the lessening in recombination between electrons and holes which are finally responsible for the maximum photocatalytic performance of Fe2O3/ZnO nanocomposites. The gained results confirmed that the dopant content is the major factor in photocatalytic degradation activity.