Well-crystalline porous ZnO-SnO2 nanosheets: An effective visible-light driven photocatalyst and highly sensitive smart sensor material

摘要

This work demonstrates the synthesis and characterization of porous ZnO-SnO2 nanosheets prepared by the simple and facile hydrothermal method at low-temperature. The prepared nanosheets were characterized by several techniques which revealed the well-crystallinity, porous and well-defined nanosheet morphology for the prepared material. The synthesized porous ZnO-SnO2 nanosheets were used as an efficient photocatalyst for the photocatalytic degradation of highly hazardous dye, i.e., direct blue 15 (DB 15), under visible-light irradiation. The excellent photocatalytic degradation of prepared material towards DB 15 dye could be ascribed to the formation of ZnO-SnO2 heterojunction which effectively separates the photogenerated electron-hole pairs and possess high surface area. Further, the prepared porous ZnO-SnO2 nanosheets were utilized to fabricate a robust chemical sensor to detect 4-nitrophenol in aqueous medium. The fabricated sensor exhibited extremely high sensitivity of similar to 1285.76 mu A/mmol L-1 cm(-2) and an experimental detection limit of 0.078 mmol L-1 with a linear dynamic range of 0.078-1.25 mmol L-1. The obtained results confirmed that the prepared porous ZnOSnO2 nanosheets are potential material for the removal of organic pollutants under visible light irradiation and efficient chemical sensing applications. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.