Facile synthesis of hollow ZnS nanospheres for environmental remediation

•This paper reports the photocatalytic degradation of hollow ZnS nanospheres.•A facile hydrothermal route was used to synthesize hollow ZnS nanospheres.•The prepared nanospheres exhibited high photodegradation efficiencies.•The experiments revealed that the photocatalytic degradation rate remained stable.

This paper reports the successful synthesis, characterization and photocatalytic degradation applications of hollow ZnS nanospheres prepared by facile hydrothermal process. The detailed structural and morphological properties revealed that the prepared nanospheres are well-crystalline and grown in very high density. The prepared nanospheres were utilized as efficient photocatalyst for the photocatalytic degradation of three harmful and toxic dyes, i.e. methyl orange(MO), eosin red and methylene blue(MB) which exhibited excellent photocatalytic degradation in the order of MO (65%)