Polyaniline Nanotube-ZnO Composite Materials: Facile Synthesis and Application

Polyaniline nanotubes and PANI-ZnO nanocomposites were prepared by the simplified Template-Free method. The experimental results indicated that the average diameter of Polyaniline nanotubes was approximately 150-200 nm. The average crystallite size of ZnO in PANI-ZnO composites was 27 nm. Moreover, the as-prepared samples were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), FT-IR spectroscopy(FTIR) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). Photocatalytic properties of the obtained samples were investigated by the photodegradation analysis of orange II and methylene orange dye. The as-prepared PANI-ZnO nanocomposites exhibited much higher photocatalytic activity than pure PANI nanotubes. During 2 h photocatalytic courses under UV irradiation, the degradation ratios of Orange II and methyl orange using PANI-ZnO nanocomposites were 90.3% and 84.5%, respectively. Furthermore, this method can be extended to prepare other organic-inorganic semiconductor composites based composite catalysts.