Facile, low cost synthesis of cauliflower-shaped ZnO with MWCNT/rGO nanocomposites and their photocatalytic activity

摘要

The present work reports cauliflower-shaped ZnO nanostructure, and ZnO/multi-wall carbon nanotubes/rGO (ZMG NCs) nanocomposites were synthesized by surfactant-assisted simple hydrothermal method. The structural, morphological, optoelectronic, chemical state, surface properties and its pho-tocatalytic capability were performed using various analytical techniques. The UV-Vis DRS results revealed that optical absorption of ZMG NCs was red shifted into visible region. Furthermore, the photocatalytic removal of methy-lene blue (MB) dye in aqueous solution was performed using the resulting catalysts, achieves maximum degradation efficiency of 96.3% under UV-Vis light irradiation for 25 min as compared with ZnO/MWCNT (86.01%), ZnO/ rGO (79.6%), and ZnO (71.9%). The enhancement in the photocatalytic degra-dation efficiency of ZMG NCs was attributed to the red-shifted band gap (2.89 eV) and high surface area (45.877 m~2g~(-1)). Moreover, the ZMG ternary NCs possessed good chemical stability, and it has a great potential application for photocatalytic dye degradation and wastewater treatment.