Wet chemically synthesized catalytic nanorods for the deactivation of thymol blue and their statistical analytical applications

Needle-shaped zinc oxide nanorods (ZnO-NRs) were obtained from zinc acetate dihydrate (Zn(CH3COO)2·2H2O) and sodium hydroxide (NaOH) via a low-temperature (~90 °C) wet chemical solution process with a short reflux time. The NRs were characterized in terms of their morphology, crystallinity and optical properties using standard characterization techniques such as X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) and UV-visible spectroscopy. The grown NRs were shown to degrade organic thymol blue (TB) dye with enhanced photocatalytic efficiency (~77.27%). The effective concentrations of ZnO-NRs were determined, optimized and validated via standard analytical techniques. For the quantitative and qualitative analysis of ZnO-NRs, statistical analytical parameters were applied to provide necessary information for the proposed method, such as solution stability, selection of wavelength, specificity, precision, accuracy, working range, limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantitation (LOQ) at a very low concentration level of the photocatalyzed solution. The UV-visible absorption spectra of the photocatalyzed solutions were evaluated.