Facile synthesis and photocatalytic activity of cocoon-shaped CuO nanostructures

• Facile growth of CuO nanococoons.
• Efficient utilization of CuO nanococoons for the photocatalytic degradation of Acridine Orange (AO).
• Effective degradation of AO when utilize CuO nanococoons.

Well-crystalline cocoon-shaped CuO nanostructures were synthesized by simple solution process and used as an efficient heterogeneous photocatalyst for the degradation of harmful organic dye under UV light irradiations at room-temperature. The as-synthesized CuO nanococoons were characterized in detail using several techniques which revealed that the prepared nanostructures are well-crystalline, grown in very high density and possessing monoclinic crystal structure. Further, as a photocatalyst, the CuO nanococoons exhibited reasonable photocatalytic degradation toward harmful organic dye, i.e. acridine orange (AO). The kinetic study revealed that the photocatalytic degradation of AO using CuO nanococoons as photocatalyst follows a pseudo-first order kinetics.