Synthesis of ZnO mesoporous powders and their application in dye photodegradation

Abstract

ZnO materials have attracted considerable interest due to their large - scale potential applications for photodiodes, photocatalysis, sensing and others. For photocatalytical application, ZnO is usually prepared with a mesoporous structure, providing a large surface area for enhancing the system performance. Nowadays, various methods have been explored to prepare ZnO porous powders and films. Among them , the most important and more common techniques to synthetize mesoporous ZnO particles are wet chemical methods , including precipitation from inorganic or organic solution s and sol - gel, owing to their simplicity and low cost. Herein, we studied ZnO mesoporous powder synthesis based on preparation and further thermal decomposition of zinc hydroxide chloride hydrate precursor. The attention was given to the role of reaction medium in the formation of final products and to the photocatalytic activity of the synthesized ZnO.