Soft synthesis of potassium co-doped Al–ZnO nanocomposites: a comprehensive study on their visible-light driven photocatalytic activity on dye degradation

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• 作者：T. V. L. Thejaswini ; Deivasigamani Prabhakaran…
• 刊名：Journal of Materials Science
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：September 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：51
• 期：17
• 页码：8187-8208
• 全文大小：4,259 KB
• 刊物类别：Chemistry and Materials Science
• 刊物主题：Chemistry
  Materials Science
  Characterization and Evaluation Materials
  Polymer Sciences
  Continuum Mechanics and Mechanics of Materials
  Crystallography
  Mechanics
  
• 出版者：Springer Netherlands
• ISSN：1573-4803
• 卷排序：51

文摘

The present work reports on the, first of its kind, synthesis of potassium co-doped aluminum-doped ZnO nanoparticles (NPs) through thermo-sol gelation process. The co-doping of K on Al–ZnO NPs is found having a significant influence on the band gap narrowing of ZnO, to an extent that the entire light absorption is shifted towards the visible-light spectrum. The synthesized NPs are characterized using, XRD, TEM, SEM, EDX, UV–Vis–DRS, BET surface area analysis, TG/DTA, PL, and ICP–OES. The band gap energy levels for bare ZnO, Al-doped ZnO, and K co-doped Al–ZnO NPs are 3.26, 3.03 and 2.88 eV, respectively. A systematic study has been carried to evaluate the photocatalytic properties of K co-doped Al–ZnO photocatalyst through Direct Green 6 (a textile dye) degradation studies, and has been compared with well-known Al–ZnO NPs. The effect of various operational parameters such as, co-dopant/dopant stoichiometry, solution pH, catalyst dosage, dye concentration, kinetics, photosensitizers, light intensity, and matrix tolerance, on the dye degradation, has been systematically evaluated. The analytical data reveal that under optimized conditions, the K co-doped Al–ZnO photocatalyst can induce complete dye degradation within 0.5 h under visible light. A comprehensive mechanism has been proposed on the photocatalytic activity of K–Al–ZnO NPs.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10853-016-0095-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.