Abstract
Niobium doped Zincoxide nanoparticles has been synthesized through electrochemical method and characterized by UV-Visible spectroscopy, IR Spectroscopy, SEM, XRD, ICPMS and EDAX data. The UV-Visible spectroscopy result reveals that the band gap energy of ZnO/Nb2O5 nanoparticles to be 3.8 eV. The XRD results show that the crystallite size is to be 31.9 nm. The ICPMS data indicate the presence of 3,3461,328 counts of 93 Nb and 577,906,390 counts of 66 Zn. An improvement in the photocatalytic degradation of Indigocarmine dye (IC) in comparison to commercially available pure ZnO was observed. The photodegradation efficiency for ZnO/Nb2O5 and ZnO were found to be 97.4% and 52.1% respectively. The enhancement in photocatalytic activity of ZnO/ Nb2O5 was ascribed to the extended light absorption range and suppression of electron hole pair recombination upon Nb loading. The antibacterial activity of ZnO/Nb2O5 nanoparticles was investigated. These particles were shown to have an effective bactericide.
Highlights
ZnO is a wide-band gap oxide semiconductor with a direct energy gap of about 3.37 eV, and as a consequence itHow to cite this paper: Rakesh, Ananda, S., Gowda, N.M.M. and Raksha, K.R. (2014) Synthesis of Niobium Doped ZnO Nanoparticles by Electrochemical Method: Characterization, Photodegradation of Indigo Carmine Dye and Antibacterial Study
According to the literatures and the fact that niobium acting as an electron trap [27], an enhanced photocatalytic activity of Nb-loaded ZnO nanoparticles found in our study was likely ascribed to a decrease of electron-hole pair recombination and promoting the photocatalytic activity [28]
The results shows the loading of niobium to the zinc oxide matrix in terms of atomic counts, where 50.0 mg of nanoparticles were dissolved in 50 ml of 2% HNO3 solution and the above solution was aspirated to the instrument after the blank analysis
Summary
ZnO is a wide-band gap oxide semiconductor with a direct energy gap of about 3.37 eV, and as a consequence it. ZnO is an environmentally friendly material, in this process, irradiation of semiconductor particles with sufficiently energetic light results in the formation of electron-hole pairs, which can subsequently migrate to the particle surface and react with adsorbed molecules to generate free radicals These free radicals are highly reactive and can mineralize organic pollutants into harmless compounds, such as CO2, H2O and simple mineral salts [3]-[5]. This process has been demonstrated as one step, suitable for dry synthesis of high surface area, and highly efficient for noble metal laden catalysts These advantages of electrochemical method promoted us to apply for production of Nb-loaded ZnO nanoparticles for photocatalyst in photodegradation of various organic solution. We synthesized and report on the photocatalytic degradation behaviour of Indigo carmine on Nb-loaded ZnO nanoparticles under UV-irradiation
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