Microwave-assisted synthesis of Ce-doped ZnO/CNT composite with enhanced photo-catalytic activity

This manuscript reports a successful additive free and fast energy-efficient microwave-assisted synthesis of nanocrystalline Ce-doped ZnO/CNT composite without calcinations. The structure and morphology of nanocrystalline Ce-doped ZnO/CNT was investigated by X-ray Diffraction (XRD), Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope (FESEM), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR), UV-visible and Photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy. The XRD results indicate that all of the samples are free of any impurity phase and crystallize only in the hexagonal structure. The synthesized Ce-doped ZnO/CNT composite achieved 96.4% photo-catalytic efficiency for methylene blue (MB) dye degradation under UV irradiation whereas the efficiency was only 34.6% for pure ZnO nanoparticles. Ce doping and insertion of CNTs into ZnO matrix enhanced the photo-catalytic activity of the composite by reducing the charge recombination. The experimental photodegradation data were well fitted to first-order, parabolic diffusion and modified Freundlich models. The results suggest that Ce-doped ZnO/CNT composite prepared by microwave irradiation method has a potential application in photo-catalysis which leads to the removal of harmful organic pollutant from the environment.