Synthesis of ZnO/MgO Nanocomposites by Electrochemical Method for Photocatalytic Degradation Kinetics of Eosin Yellow Dye

摘要

ZnO/MgO has been synthesized by electrochemical method and characterized by UV-Visible spectroscopy, IR spectroscopy, SEM, XRD, PALS and density measurement data. The UV-Visible spectroscopy results reveals that the band gap energy of ZnO/MgO nanocomposite to be 3.9 eV. The XRD results show that the crystallite size to be 17.55 nm calculated using Williamson-Hall plot. The PALS measurements reveal that the ZnO/MgO nanocoposites consists of more defects and vacancies than ZnO. An improvement in photocatalytic degradation of Eosin Yellow (EY) dye in comparison to commercially available pure ZnO was observed. The photodegradation efficiency for ZnO/MgO and ZnO were found to be 84.82% and 27.97% respectively. The enhancement in photocatalytic activity of ZnO/MgO nanocomposite was because of the highly hygroscopic and nanoporous MgO. The MgO layer contains more H2O and hydroxyl groups and offers a larger surface area.