Evidence of oxygen defects mediated enhanced photocatalytic and antibacterial performance of ZnO nanorods.

Defect engineered one-dimensional (1D) ZnO nanostructures have found great interest in diverse fields, including water detoxification and environmental remediation. In this article, we report a facile, low-temperature hydrothermal synthesis of defect enriched ZnO nanorods at different pH conditions. The dimension of all the synthesized ZnO nanostructures was restricted to 1D with changes only in their aspect ratios, unlike previous reports where change in morphology accompanies the effect of pH. With an increment in the pH value of the reaction mixture, oxygen defect concentration was controlled and confirmed using XPS and Raman spectroscopy. Considerable increase in optical light absorption and reduction in the bandgap, as inferred from the UV-vis study, corroborating the pH-dependent enrichment of defect states in 1D ZnO. Superior photosensitivity of oxygen defect rich ZnO nanorods was utilized to study their sunlight-induced photocatalytic and bactericidal activity towards its application in wastewater treatment. Within 4 h and 30 min of sunlight exposure (900 W/cm

Informations de copyright

Copyright © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.