ISSN print edition: 0366-6352 ISSN electronic edition: 1336-9075 Registr. No.: MK SR 9/7 Published monthly

Ag/ZnO: a highly sensitive optical sensor and efficient photocatalyst for degradation of 2,4,6-trinitrophenol (picric acid)

Manoj Kumar and Nidhi Sharma

Department of Chemistry, University Institute of Sciences, Chandigarh University, Punjab, India

E-mail: manoj90chem@gmail.com

Received: 25 March 2022  Accepted: 12 July 2022

Abstract:

Silver zinc oxide composite nanomaterials of good crystallinity were synthesized through low temperature facile solution-phase and UV-excitation technique. These synthesized nanomaterials were then characterized in terms of their structure, crystallinity, morphology and electronic band structure, by ultraviolet–visible (UV–vis) spectroscopy, field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDS). From these characterization techniques, it was confirmed that the prepared nanomaterials were well crystalline, grown in very high density and exhibit hexagonal wurtzite structure. It was also confirmed that prepared nanomaterials consist of metallic silver and ZnO only. Further, optical sensing performance of these as-synthesized nanomaterials was investigated by subjecting them for fluorescence sensing of picric acid. As Ag/ZnO nanocomposites were established to be efficient PL sensor for PA, these same materials were used for photocatalytic degradation of PA using UV lamp as light source. After carrying out the photocatalytic studies, it was observed that Ag/ZnO catalysts were able to degrade 70% of PA in 150 min, whereas, ZnO photocatalyst took about 300 min to achieve same amount of degradation. The high efficiency of Ag/ZnO photocatalyst can be attributed to the presence of metallic silver and oxygen vacancy defects, which assist in the effective separation of photoexcited electron/hole (e⁻/h⁺) pair.

Keywords: Ag/ZnO nanocomposites; Fluorescence detection of picric acid; Photodegradation of picric acid; Photocatalysis

Full paper is available at www.springerlink.com.

DOI: 10.1007/s11696-022-02374-y

Chemical Papers 76 (11) 6903–6914 (2022)