Hydrothermal Synthesis of ZnO Nanosheets Using Molybdophosphoric Acid as a Green and Eco-friendly Catalyst and Their Photocatalytic Applications for Degradation of Azo Dyes

ZnO nanosheets were synthesized hydrothermally by reacting zinc acetate in the presence of molybdophosphoric acid (H3[PMo12O40], 3e-3 M) at 120°C for 48 hours. The ZnO nanosheets werecharacterized by transmission electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction. The results demonstrated that the synthesized products are single crystalline with Zinccite hexagonal phase. Also, photocatalytic degradation of Methylene blue was investigated using the prepared ZnO nanosheets. They have shown high performance in the photocatalytic degradation and almost 70%of decolorization was occurred within only 15 min. First order reaction constant was evaluated as 0.0792 for Methylene blue degradation reaction

Keywords:

ZnO , Nanosheet , Molybdophosphoric acid , Hydrothermal , Photodegradation