Zinc oxide/reduced graphene oxide nanocomposites (ZnO/rGO) are synthesized via a simple one-pot solvothermal technique. The nanoparticle–nanorod turnability was achieved with the increase in GO additive, which was necessary to control the defect formation. The optimal defect in ZnO/rGO not only increased ZnO/rGO surface and carrier concentration, but also provided the alternative carrier pathway assisted with rGO sheet for electron–hole separation and prolonging carrier recombination. These properties are ideal for photodetection and photocatalytic applications. For photosensing properties, ZnO/rGO shows the improvement of photosensitivity compared with pristine ZnO from 1.51 (ZnO) to 3.94 (ZnO/rGO (20%)). Additionally, applying bending strain on ZnO/rGO enhances its photosensitivity even further, as high as 124% at r = 12.5 mm, due to improved surface area and induced negative piezoelectric charge from piezoelectric effect. Moreover, the photocatalytic activity with methylene blue (MB) was studied. It was observed that the rate of MB degradation was higher in presence of ZnO/rGO than pristine ZnO. Therefore, ZnO/rGO became a promising materials for different applications.

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Cerium-oxide-nanoparticle-decorated zinc oxide was successfully prepared using a simple one-pot hydrothermal technique with different weight% Ce doping. It was found that an increase in Ce doping has an effect on the optical energy band-gap tunability. Ce dopant provides electron trapping on Ce/ZnO nanocomposites and also acts as a surface defect generator during hydrothermal processing. Additionally, a bi-metal oxide heterojunction forms, which acts as a charge separator to obstruct charge recombination and to increase the photodegradation performance. It was found that the methyl orange (MO) degradation performance improved with an increase in Ce doping. The decomposition of MO went from 69.42% (pristine ZnO) to 94.06% (7% Ce/ZnO) after 60 min under fluorescent lamp illumination.

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