ZIF-8 derived porous N-doped ZnO with enhanced visible light-driven photocatalytic activity

Abstract

A facile and simple method was offered to synthesize porous N-doped ZnO via direct calcination of urea and ZIF-8 mixture. From XRD and XPS analysis, nitrogen has been successfully incorporated into ZnO lattices without introducing other N-containing or Zn-containing phases. Such nitrogen doping can enhance the visible-light harvesting ability and inhibit the recombination rate of electron-hole pairs; as a result, improved visible-light driven photocatalytic activity was achieved in N-doped porous ZnO and the photocatalytic activity of N-doped ZnO is 2.58 times higher than that of ZIF-derived pure ZnO.