A Novel one-step synthesis of Ag-doped ZnO nanoparticles for high performance photo-catalytic applications

In this report, pure and silver (Ag) doped zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles with various concentrations of silver (5 and 10 wt%) was successfully synthesized by a novel and one step microwave irradiation method. Powder X-ray diffraction results indicates that all of the as-synthesized samples including the highest Ag (10 wt%) doping have a hexagonal wurtzite type structure and average crystalline size was found to be 28, 21 and 16 nm for pure and Ag doped ZnO respectively. Spherical shaped morphology with an average diameter of around 32–13 nm was observed by Transmission electron microscope analysis. UV–Vis spectra revealed that, Ag doped samples exhibits a red shift in the absorption band edge with increasing Ag dopant concentration. The photocatalytic degradation of methyl violet (MV), phenol and rhodamine B (RHB) was investigated by using Ag-ZnO catalyst under UV light irradiation. The result showed that the photocatalytic property was significantly improved by Ag doping. The improved photocatalytic mechanism by Ag doping was also discussed. The samples were further characterized by photoluminescence spectra and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectra (FTIR) analysis.