Superficial sonication synthesis of a highly sunshine active metal modified ZnO photocatalyst and its multiple applications

Abstract

Hexagonal and spherical-like SrO/Ag/ZnO nanostructures have been successfully synthesized by a simple sonication method. The structure and composition of the samples were analyzed by XRD, FE-SEM, EDX, TEM, DRS, PL, XPS and BET surface area measurements. In this present work, the photocatalytic degradation of Trypan blue dye with prepared heterogeneous photocatalyst for SrO/Ag/ZnO under the natural sun light. The behavior of operational parameters such as pH, catalyst dosage, dye concentration and stability of the catalyst on photo mineralization of TB dye has been investigated. The Sr/Ag/ZnO stability was studied by its antiphotocorrosion property. The result shows that antiphotocorrosive property of SrO/Ag/ZnO is better than bare ZnO because of their reusability and photostability behavior. The antibacterial activity was also tested by SrO/Ag/ZnO, pure ZnO, and commercial ZnO. The mineralization of Trypan Blue dye has been confirmed by COD measurements.

Keywords:

• Antiphotocorrosive
• SrO/Ag/ZnO
• detoxification
• azodye
• long-term stability

Acknowledgements

One of the authors (M. Shanthi) is highly thankful to UGC, New Delhi, India for financial support through research project F. No. 41-288/2012 (SR).

Declaration of interests

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.