Role of Metal Exchange toward the Morphology and Photocatalytic Activity of Cu/Ag/Au-Doped ZnO: A Study with a Zinc–Sodium Acetate Complex as the Precursor

The present work disclosed a zinc(II)–sodium acetate complex (C32H48O34Na8Zn4, C-1), in which weakly bound sodium (Na) has been utilized for selective metal exchange with guest metals (CuII and AgI) for the synthesis of Cu/Ag/Au-loaded ZnO. The morphology, growth, and band gap of the materials are found to be highly dependent upon their metal-exchange capacity. The presence of Cu/Ag/Au with ZnO improves the spectral response and effectively suppresses the hole–electron pair recombination process to facilitate efficient H2O2 production from water and oxygen under visible light, and thus the compound was utilized as an efficient reusable photocatalyst for the degradation and complete remediation of various toxic phenols and dyes into CO2, NO3–, and SO42– in water.