Electrochemical synthesis and characterization of zinc carbonate and zinc oxide nanoparticles

• Zinc oxide as a widely used material in various industries was prepared by calcination of precursor (zinc carbonate).
• ZnCO3 nanoparticles were fabricated via facile electrochemical route.
• Synthesis of nanomaterial was carried out without any surfactant, template or catalyst.
• Synthesis reaction was optimized by Taguchi design to prepare nanoparticles.
• Product nanoparticles were characterized by XRD, FT-IR, UV-Vib and TG/DTA.

Zinc oxide and its precursor i.e., zinc carbonate is widely utilized in various fields of industry, especially in solar energy conversion, optical, and inorganic pigments. In this work, a facile and clean electrodeposition method was utilized for the synthesis of zinc carbonate nanoparticles. Also, zinc oxide nanoparticles were produced by calcination of the prepared zinc carbonate powder. Zinc carbonate nanoparticles with different sizes were electrodeposited by electrolysis of a zinc plate as anode in the solution of sodium carbonate. It was found that the particle size of zinc carbonate might be tuned by process parameters, i.e., electrolysis voltage, carbonate ion concentration, solvent composition and stirring rate of the electrolyte solution. An orthogonal array design was utilized to identify the optimum experimental conditions. The experimental results showed that the minimum size of the electrodeposited ZnCO3 particles is about 24 nm whereas the maximum particle size is around 40 nm. The TG-DSC studies of the nanoparticles indicated that the main thermal degradation of ZnCO3 occurs in two steps over the temperature ranges of 150–250 and 350–400 °C. The electrosynthesized ZnCO3 nanoparticles were calcined at the temperature of 600 °C to prepare ZnO nanoparticles. The prepared ZnCO3 and ZnO nanoparticles were characterized by SEM, X-ray diffraction (XRD), and FT-IR techniques.

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