Excellent Photocatalytic degradation of Methylene Blue, Rhodamine B and Methyl Orange dyes by Ag-ZnO nanocomposite under natural sunlight irradiation

Highly efficient silver assisted ZnO nanocomposite (AZ) was fabricated by using the co-precipitation method. HR-SEM reveals the presence of nano rods, plates and balls. The incorporation of silver to ZnO reduces the bandgap of ZnO by the Surface Plasmon Resonance effect and this leads to the shift in the emission spectra from ultraviolet (UV) to the visible region. This provide an opportunity to capture large number of photons from the sunlight. The photocatalytic test was conducted under natural sunlight with cationic and anionic dyes. Among all the prepared samples, AZ-1 exhibited the highest photocatalytic degradation efficiency over methylene blue (MB) dye. The prepared samples would create the new pathway for degrading the industrial waste water treatment process.