Study on photocatalytic activity of ZnO nanodisks for the degradation of Rhodamine B dye

• ZnO nanodisks (ZnO-NDs) are synthesized by a low temperature chemical method.
• ZnO-NDs utilized as photocatalyst for the degradation of Rhodamine B (RhB) dye.
• Degradation of RhB dye with the rate of ~90% within 90 min is observed.
• Unique disk morphology favors the large generation of oxygenated radicals.

Highly dense zinc oxide (ZnO) nanodisks (ZnO-NDs) were synthesized through the low temperature chemical method with zinc nitrate hexahydrate as raw materials, and applied as photocatalyst for the photocatalytic degradation of Rhodamine B (RhB) dye. The morphological results revealed that the synthesized materials possessed disks like morphology with the average size of ~200 nm. In addition, the synthesized ZnO-NDs exhibited the good optical and structural properties with band gap of ~3.21 eV. The catalytic activity of the synthesized ZnO-NDs was examined by performing the photocatalytic degradation of RhB dye under UV-light illumination. A rapid RhB-dye degradation was recorded with the high degradation rate ~90% in ~90 min over the surface of ZnO-NDs.