A green and novel approach for the synthesis of SnO2 nanoparticles and its exploitation as a catalyst in the degradation of methylene blue under solar radiation

SnO2 nanoparticles (NPs) were successfully synthesized using amino acid arginine under microwave irradiation. This resulted in the formation of spherical SnO2 NPs with an average diameter of ~4-5 nm. SnO2 NPs were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), selected area electron diffraction (SAED) and Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR). The optical properties were investigated using UV-visible spectroscopy. A clear blue-shift was observed in the band gap energy of synthesized SnO2 NPs (~4.3 eV) from bulk SnO2. These SnO2 NPs were employed as a photocatalyst in the degradation of methylene blue dye by solar radiation.