Sono- and photocatalytic activities of SnO2 nanoparticles for degradation of cationic and anionic dyes

Abstract

The current research work focuses on the catalytic activity of SnO2 nanoparticles (NPs) against degradation of both cationic dye (methylene blue) and anionic dye (Congo-red). SnO2 NPs were synthesized under the sol-gel method and were characterized by performing X-ray diffraction, Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR), Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) Brunauer-Emmet-Teller (BET) surface area analysis and UV-Vis spectroscopy. The results demonstrate that SnO2 NPs has well crystalline structure with the crystallite size of 44 nm. The degradation of dyes was studied under ambient temperature using ultrasonicator and UV light, respectively. The sono- and photocatalytic activities of SnO2 NPs on dyes were analyzed by measuring the change in absorbance of dyes under UV-spectrophotometer. The degradation of the organic dyes has been calculated by monitoring the degradation in the concentration of the dyes before and after irradiation of ultrasonic and light, respectively. The influence of other p...