Photocatalytic activity of polymer-modified ZnO under visible light irradiation

Structural and optical characterization of pure and starch-capped ZnO quantum dots and their photocatalytic activity

“…Further, all the irradiated samples show a higher photocatalytic activity around 550 nm (Nagaraja et al 2012) where their absorption intensity decreases slowly with increase in the irradiation time which indicates the degradation of the dye (Ali et al 2013). Due to the formation of more free-radical from small size of QDs, a higher degradation effect was observed in the ZnO/starch QDs corresponding to that of pure ZnO QDs (Qiu et al 2008). The photodegradation comparison spectrum was plotted as a relation between irradiation time and absorption intensity in Fig.…”

“…Indeed, organic molecules capped with inorganic nanostructures introduce a new type of photophysical and photochemical properties resulting from the combinatorial effects of organic and inorganic phases (Wilkes et al 1985;Levy et al 2004). For instance, conjugated ZnO nanostructure could extend the absorption band up to the visible region and can play an important role in the photocatalytic degradation which could enhance high photocatalytic activity (Qiu et al 2008;Sudha et al 2013). Many methods are available for attaching the polymer chains onto surface of NPs, even though the polydispersed NPs nature serves agglomeration due to lack of effective surface passivation.…”

Hierarchical Ag-ZnO Microspheres with Enhanced Photocatalytic Degradation Activities

“…So far, diverse strategies have been explored to overcome the aforementioned drawbacks, including surface alteration [7], formation of heterostructures [8][9][10] or nanocomposites [11][12] modified with polymer [13] or metals [14][15], etc. Many researchers have demonstrated a significantly extended light-absorption range and prolonging the lifetimes of photoexcited charge carriers through the decoration of noble metal nanoparticles onto ZnO [16][17][18][19].…”

Visible light degradation of textile effluent using nanostructured TiO2/Ag/CuO photocatalysts

“…Efficient photogeneration of electron -hole pairs, prevention of their recombination and reduction of specific surface area of the particles of the photocatalysts are the key factors in increasing the efficiency of photocatalytic activity. Several researchers have proven that coupling of semiconductors with noble metals and other semiconductor materials at nanoscales plays significant role in modifying the above factors [5][6][7][8][9].…”