Abstract
Nanoparticles of Zn1-xCuxO system with nominal compositions x = 0.0, 0.01, 0.02 and 0.03 were prepared by co-precipitation method at room temperature. Structural, morphological, optical and chemical species of grown crystals were investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD) technique, Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), UV-visible and FTIR spectroscopy, respectively. XRD analysis confirms that all samples have hexagonal structure with no impurity phases which suggest that Cu ion successfully incorporated into the regular ZnO crystal structure. The lattice parameters, volume of unit cell, X-ray density, atomic packing fraction, c/a ratio, and grain size were calculated from XRD pattern of pure and Cu doped ZnO samples and it was found that the grain size was in the range of 23 nm to 29 nm. The strain in pure and Cu doped ZnO samples was calculated by W-H analysis. Optical properties of Zn1-xCuxO samples were studied by using UV-vis spectrophotometer. Optical absorption spectra show that the band gap decreases with increasing Cu contents. The functional group and chemical interactions of Zn1-xCuxO samples were also determined at various peaks using FTIR data and observed that the functional groups corresponding to the Zn-O bands in the samples. The photocatalytic activities of the samples were investigated by oxidation of methylene blue under UV light illumination in batch reactor. The scavenger study was carried out to find out main reactive species responsible for the degradation of dyes.
Highlights
With great ability to manipulate structure of the materials on the level of individual atoms and molecules, the nanotechnology is a promising highly interdisciplinary field
Pure and Cu (1%, 2% and 3% at wt) doped ZnO samples successively prepared by co-precipitation method at room temperature
From X-ray diffraction (XRD) data it is confirmed that all the samples are good crystalline in nature with wurtzite hexagonal structure
Summary
With great ability to manipulate structure of the materials on the level of individual atoms and molecules, the nanotechnology is a promising highly interdisciplinary field. Doping of photocatalyst with metal ions creates local energy levels within the band gap of the photocatalyst, with corresponding absorption bands lying in the visible spectral range The photoexcitation of such impurities should lead to the generation of free charge carriers to initiate surface chemical processes but the efficiency of such systems under visible light strongly depended on the preparation method used. In some cases, such doped photocatalyst showed no activity under visible light and lower activity in the UV spectral range compared with the non-doped photocatalyst because of high carrier recombination rates through the metal ion levels [26]. The photo catalytic studies of prepared samples were evaluated by recording the spectra of methylene blue dye solution with catalyst at regular intervals
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