Optical and photocatalytic properties of Mn doped flower-like ZnO hierarchical structures

A novel Mn doped flower-like ZnO hierarchical structures were successfully synthesized with a facile ion-exchange method. Structural properties of the synthesized photocatalysis have been investigated with XRD, FESEM equipped with energy dispersive spectroscopy, while UV-vis and PL spectroscopy were employed to study their optical properties. The inner structure of doped ZnO hierarchical structure can be finely transformed from nanosheets to nanorods and to nanoparticles with the increasing of doping contents. All the synthesized Mn/ZnO samples exhibit strong blue-violet emission. Furthermore, the optical absorption towards visible light of ZnO was significantly enhanced due to the incorporation of Mn ions. The photocatalytic results indicate that photocatalytic activity of ZnO was enhanced with the doping of Mn and there is an optimum Mn doping level, leading to the highest photocatalytic performance.