Low Temperature Synthesis of Elongated Triangular Bipyramidal ZnO Nanostructures for Photocatalytic Activity

The manuscript reports wet chemical assisted low temperature synthesis of CTAB stabilized elongated triangular bipyramidal shape nanostructures of ZnO for photocatalytic degradation of methyle blue (MB) and congo red (CR) dyes. Physiochemical characterization has been carried out by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscope, transmission electron microscope and UV-visible spectroscope. Pure wurtzite structure of ZnO with crystallite size similar to 56 nm has been confirmed from X-ray study. Well dispersed particles with elongated triangular bipyramidal morphology have been observed through SEM. Fine resolved particles with varied aspect ratios similar to 80 X 200 +/- 10 nm have been depicted by TEM images. UV-visible absorption analysis confirms the energy band gap of 3.43 eV for synthesized ZnO particles. Molecular composition and functional groups of CTAB were confirmed by FTIR spectroscopy. The potential applicability of the particles for photocatalytic degradation of MB and CR as standard analytical dyes was studied. Time bound study under UV irradiated source depicted more than 95% degradation of both dyes in separate experiments.