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Enhanced visible-light photodegradation of organic pollutants by surface plasmon resonance supported Ag/ZnO heterostructures

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Abstract

The design of a highly efficient, cost-effective, and persistent photocatalyst to eliminate various organic contaminants has been a hot topic in the research community for several years. Here, we have synthesized rods like morphology of pure ZnO and Ag/ZnO composites via facile co-precipitation method. The prepared materials were studied using structural, optical, etc. characterization techniques and tested for photodegradation of Indigo Carmine (IC) dye under the illumination of visible light. The appreciable improvement in results were observed due to formation of heterojunction and surface plasmon resonance (SPR) property of metallic silver. The optimal Ag modified ZnO (5 mol% of Ag) composite shows 95.03% degradation efficiency in 240 min. Furthermore, a possible photocatalysis reaction mechanism was discussed here by doing the radical trapping experiments. However, more detailed studies are needed to confirm the reproducibility of this initial observation, for using them for specific applications.

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Data of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgments

One of the authors RK is thankful to the Director, VNIT Nagpur, India for providing financial support. Authors also thank DST-FIST Department of Physics, VNIT for providing the research facilities. Furthermore, the authors also thankful to CSIR-NEERI, Nagpur, India for their support in ICP-OES and TOC analyses.

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  1. Department of Physics, Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur, 440010, India

    Rahul Kumar, S. Y. Janbandhu, G. K. Sukhadeve & R. S. Gedam

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  1. Rahul Kumar
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Kumar, R., Janbandhu, S.Y., Sukhadeve, G.K. et al. Enhanced visible-light photodegradation of organic pollutants by surface plasmon resonance supported Ag/ZnO heterostructures. Journal of Materials Research 38, 557–570 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1557/s43578-022-00844-3

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