A facile and fast solution chemistry synthesis of porous ZnO nanoparticles for high efficiency photodegradation of tartrazine

Abstract

In this paper, we developed a facile and fast method to prepare porous ZnO nanoparticles as an excellent photocatalyst by a chemical route using citrate as capping agent for the degradation of tartrazine from aqueous solution. For comparison ZnO rods and flowers were prepared and their photocatalytic ability also was evaluated. The as-synthesized ZnO samples were characterized by XRD, SEM, and N2 adsorption/desorption. The XRD results showed that as-prepared ZnO samples were highly crystalline with the hexagonal wurtzite structure. The morphological results revealed that the average size of ZnO nanoparticles was approximately 30-40 nm. Whereas, ZnO rods had the length of 600 nm and the diameter of 200 nm and ZnO flowers were formed by a lot of nanosheets with an average thickness of 20 nm. The surface area and pore volume of porous ZnO nanoparticle samples were higher than those of flowers and rods. As the expectation, ZnO nanoparticles exhibited the highest degradation rate and efficiency of tartrazine under UV irradiation. The excellent photocatalytic activity of ZnO nanoparticles may be attributed to its surface area and pore volume. In addition, ZnO nanoparticles exhibited a good recycling performance after three cycles of use.