A facile synthesis of Zn-doped TiO2 nanostructures for enhanced photocatalytic performance

In recent years, environmental pollution has been considered a great concern. The environmental pollution is cleaned by filtration, ozonation, adsorption, and electrochemical reaction techniques but they cannot completely degrade the organic pollutants and these techniques are also expensive. Zn-doped TiO2 nanoparticles were synthesized by the hydrothermal method and the photocatalytic degradation mechanism of methylene blue (MB) dye under visible light irradiation was performed. The catalyst was characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction, Raman spectra, UV–Visible reflectance spectra, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The XRD and Raman results indicated that doping Zn into TiO2 nanoparticles could exhibit the anatase phase. FESEM and TEM reveal the formation of mesoporous spherical nanoparticles. After doping absorption wavelength extended in the visible region, which is confirmed from optical spectra. The highest photocatalytic degradation rate was achieved 94% in 30 min under visible light and also fitted a pseudo-first-order equation. Zn-doped TiO2 nanoparticles were found to be promising materials for the photocatalytic decomposition of MB under visible light.