Synthesis, characterization and efficient photo-catalytic performance of methylene blue by Zn doped SnO2 nanoparticles

Abstract In this manuscript, we present a facile and friendly sol-gel method to prepare bare and Zn-doped SnO2 nanoparticles and measured the photocatalytic performance of the materials by measuring the degradation of MB dye under UV light irradiation. A variety of analytical techniques were employed to characterize the materials, including X-ray diffraction, UV–Vis spectroscopy, Photoluminescence (PL), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). The X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis reveals the presence of tetragonal SnO2 nanostructures. The average crystallite size of the bare SnO2 nanostructures was found to be 7.4 nm, but the addition of Zn dopant caused the size to increase to 10.5 nm. PL studies shows that the majority of emission energies fell within the SnO2 NPs’ band gap, indicating defects related to oxygen vacancies or Sn interstitials. The morphological analysis of SEM exhibits the various forms of SnO2 nanostructures which are densely agglomerate. The photocatalytic activity of the SZ10 NPs was found to be MB (88 %). The results showed that the Zn doped SnO2 exhibited good photocatalytic activity.