Efficient surfactant modified copper oxide nanoparticles for solar light driven water purification

Abstract Nanostructured materials find a number of applications due to their inimitable physical and chemical properties. In the current work copper oxide nanoparticles (CuO NPs) and surfactant assisted CuO nanoparticles were synthesized via a simple precipitation method from corresponding copper salts. Triton X-100 and cetyl alcohol were used as surfactants to modify the properties of CuO nanoparticles. The synthesized materials were characterized by Fourier transform infra-red (FTIR) spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction (XRD) studies. The thermal stability and morphology of the CuO NPs were investigated via thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) techniques, respectively. The analysis of results confirmed that nano sized regime CuO materials were successfully synthesized via a simple, inexpensive and reproducible procedure. Additionally, catalytic test of the CuO NPs was performed to check their ability to use in reducing environmental hazardous species i.e. methylene blue (MB) dye from water bodies. For this, the CuO NPs were employed for photocatalytic degradation of MB dye under sunlight which showed tremendous catalytic properties of CuO NPs for degradation of dye in an aqueous media. In aqueous medium, the CuOcal. Showed maximum degradation efficiency of 85.0%, whereas at a basic pH of 12, CuO-Triton-Xcal. Showed a degradation efficiency of 100%.