Room Temperature Synthesis of Surface Modified ZnO Nanoparticles and its Application in Dye Degradation

J. Mishra1, N. Kaur2, A. K. Ganguli3, 4*

1 Centre for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India, 160014

2 Department of Chemistry, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India, 160014

3Indian Institute of Technology, Hauz Khas, Delhi, India, 110016

4Institute of Nano Science and Technology, Habitat centre, Phase 10, Sector 64, Mohali, India, 160062

Water pollution is a major environmental issue in the present scenario. Dyes are one of the dreadful agents which cause water pollution. Semiconductors like ZnO, CdSe etc. are well known materials [1-5] reported for dye degradation in the presence of light. But high temperature, pressure and rigorous reaction conditions are required for the synthesis of suitable photocatalyst which can be used for dye degradation. In order to address this problem, we have synthesized an organic surface directing agent by a simple single step reaction which is used further for insitu ZnO nanoparticle synthesis at room temperature. This surface modified ZnO nanoparticles were then used as photocatalyst for Rhodamine B dye degradation from dye solution. The results revealed that the surface modified ZnO nanoparticles have removed up to 94% dye from dye solution when kept in the dark for 30 min which increases upto 98% after 1 hour of Hg lamp illumination.

Acknowledgement: Authors thank DST, India for the financial support.

References:

[1]  Ren et al., ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2014, 6, 1608- 1615

[2]  Ganguli et al., ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2014, 6, 13221- 13233

[3]  Ganguli et al., J. Phys. Chem. C 2013, 117, 5558- 5567

[4]  Shi and Yan et al.,Cryst Eng Comm, 2015, 17, 1701-1709  

[5]  Li et al., Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2013, 15, 19545- 19549 

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