Tartaric acid-assisted combustion of visible-light-driven Eu-doped ZnO nanoparticles

Abstract

ZnO nanoparticles doped with 0–5% Eu were synthesized by a tartaric acid-assisted combustion method. The effect of different contents of Eu dopant on phase and morphology was investigated by different techniques. The as-synthesized samples with and without dopant were single phase of hexagonal wurtzite ZnO nanoparticles. The average particle sizes of the as-prepared samples were decreased from 59 nm for pure ZnO to 20 nm for Eu-doped ZnO. The photocatalytic activities of as-synthesized ZnO with and without Eu dopant were investigated through the degradation of methylene blue (MB) under visible light irradiation for 100 min. In this research, 3% Eu-doped ZnO nanoparticles exhibited the best photocatalytic activity in degrading of MB of 97.90% or 5.5 times the photocatalytic activity of pure ZnO nanoparticles. A mechanism for photocatalysis of Eu-doped ZnO nanoparticles was also proposed in this research.