ON THE CONTRIBUTION FACTORS OF ENHANCED PHOTOCATALYTIC ACTIVITY OF DOPED SEMICONDUCTORS: STRUCTURAL AND OPTICAL INTVESTIGATION OF CU2+ DOPED ZnO NANOPARTICLE

Abstract

As a traditional direct bandgap oxide semiconductor, ZnO, showed as a promising photocatalytic candidate. Researchers worldwide reported many possibilities to improve its photocatalytic activity such as doped with metal, non-metal ions. As a result of heterojunction formation between ZnO and its intentional impurity, previous reports showed beneficial characteristics for enhancing photocatalytic activity in these ZnO-based materials, i.e. bandgap narrowing, recombination rate of photoelectron-hole prolonging, visible light absorption improving. This work will present the photocatalytic acitivity improvement of ZnO when doping with ion Cu2+ and try to illustrate the crucial photocatalytic enhancement factors.