One-step hydrothermal synthesis and enhanced photocatalytic performance of pine-needle-like Zn-doped CuO nanostructures

A novel pine-needle-like Zn-doped CuO nanostructures were synthesized by a low-cost and simple hydrothermal method, which were composed of smaller nanosheets. The phase structure, micromorphology, optical property and photocatalytic performance were characterized by X-ray diffraction pattern, field emission scanning electron microscopy, UV–Vis spectrophotometer and photocatalytic measurement device. And the actual elemental distribution was obtained by energy dispersive spectroscopy. Cell Parameters of Zn-doped CuO nanostructures were obtained from Rietveld refinement technique. The results revealed that these pine needles had the length of 1 μm and width of 50 nm. Compared to the undoped CuO, the intensity peaks of Zn-doped CuO had a slight shift, indicating that Zn ions successfully entered into the crystal lattice of CuO without changing the original crystal structure. 2.0 wt% Zn-doped CuO displayed the best light absorption ability especially in visible region. The red shift behavior of band gap can be observed. Moreover, doped samples showed the significantly enhanced photocatalytic activity.