In-situ Synthesis of Zinc Oxide Seeds on Thin Film of Mica as the Highly Reactive Photocatalyst Under UV-Light Irradiation
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Date
2019
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Uva Wellassa University of Sri Lanka
Abstract
Structurally layered mica has attracted much attention of the mineralogists due to its unique structural properties. This study mainly concerns in developing the nano-seeds of Zinc oxide on thin film of mica (ZnO-mica) and the potential study of the photo-catalytic property under UV-light irradiation. The ZnO-mica was prepared by the In-situ growth of nanoparticles. 5 g of (0.5 cm × 0.5 cm) cut thin films of mica was added to the mixture of 600 µL, 50 mL of Cetyltrimethylammonium chloride (CTAC) and 2 mol dm-3, 50 mL of zinc nitrate hexahydrate. Then, Zn(OH)2 seeds were grown on the thin sheets of mica by adding 4 mol dm-3, 50 mL of NaOH solution with stirring for 24 hrs. The obtained product was then calcined at about 600 ℃. Finally, photo-catalytic property study was carried out in beakers containing 50 mL of Methylene Blue (MB) with various dose of (1.0, 3.0, 4.0 and 10.0 g) ZnO-mica. UV-Vis spectroscopy analysis was implemented with 30 min of time interval under the UV-light irradiation with initializing under dark condition for 30 min to 3.5 hrs. The synthesized final product was characterized by using the characterizing techniques such as X-ray powder diffraction and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and thermo gravimetric analysis. The analytical data from the SEM reveal that the synthesized product with flower-like morphology having average particle length and width are 800 nm and 50 nm respectively. The crystallinity and the chemical analysis using XRD and FT-IR confirm the presence of ZnO on mica. The plot of percentage dye degradation versus time with increasing dosage under UV light indicates the rapid photo-catalytic dye degradation with increasing dosage of the photo-catalyst. The simple, flexible and novel method has been devised to develop the photo-catalyst under the UV-light irradiation.
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Material Sciences, Mineral Sciences