Electrospinning of CeO2–ZnO composite nanofibers and their photocatalytic property

CeO2–ZnO composite nanofibers were fabricated via the electrospinning technique using zinc acetate and cerium nitrate as the precursors, poly(vinylpyrrolidone) as the fiber template, and 2:1(v/v) ethanol/water mixtures as the co-solvent, followed by thermal treatment at 600 °C for 3 h. Various characterization methods were employed to investigate the morphologies and structures of the nanofibers. The calcined composite nanofibers showed a continuous line feature with an average diameter of 46 nm composed of 15 ± 3 nm CeO2 and ZnO nanoparticles. Photocatalytic activity experiments showed that the Rhodamine B was almost completely decomposed when it was catalyzed by CeO2–ZnO nanofibers within 3 h, while only 17.4% and 82.3% were decomposed under catalysis by CeO2 and ZnO nanofibers respectively. Such CeO2–ZnO composite nanofibers could have potential applications in the treatment of organic-polluted water.