Effective photocatalytic degradation of rhodamine B dye by ZnO nanoparticles

Abstract Highly crystalline ZnO nanoparticles (NPs) were synthesized with zinc acetate as precursor and oxalic acid at 80 °C through the simple solution phase approach. The synthesized ZnO NPs possessed monodispersity with the average size 20–30 nm. The crystalline properties revealed the typical hexagonal wurtzite phase with orientation along c -axis. The photocatalytic activity investigation was carried out by performing the decomposition of rhodamine-B dye under UV illumination over as-synthesized ZnO NPs. The rhodamine B dye considerably degraded by ∼95% within 70 min in the presence of as-synthesized ZnO NPs. An excellent rate constant ( k =0.0343 min −1 ) was obtained for the degradation of rhodamine B dye.