Facile synthesis of phase pure ZnAl2O4 nanoparticles for effective photocatalytic degradation of organic dyes

The present work focuses on the surfactant mediated synthesis of ZnAl2O4 nanoparticles (1-3) using sol-gel method. 1 has been synthesized without any surfactant and during the synthesis of 2 and 3 cationic (cetyltrimethylammonium bromide) and anionic (sodium lauryl sulfate) surfactant, respectively, have been added. 1-3 have been characterized by P-XRD, FT-IR, SEM, SAED, TEM and BET techniques which suggest that surfactant reduces the particle size of ZnAl2O4 nanoparticles to half (12 nm in 1, 6 nm in 2 and 3). Zeta (0 potential measurements have been performed to determine the surface charges of all the samples. Moreover, the photo catalytic activities of these ZnAl2O4 nanoparticles have also been investigated. 2 exhibits better adsorption (28-41%) and degradation (97-99%) efficiency for anionic dyes due to high surface area (129.62 m(2) g(-1)) and positively charged surface potential 30.06 mV). Radical trapping experiments suggest O-2(center dot-) and OH center dot to be the major reactive species for the degradation of dyes.