Abstract:
Various forms of dyes are used in fabric productions and the polluted water is ejected as
it is without any treatment for the removal of harmful dyes. Such contaminated water is
unsafe for both the human and animal health. Hence, treatment of such polluted water is
very necessary. Photocatalyis has proved to be really effective method in converting these
contaminated compounds to less toxic compounds e.g. H2O and CO2. Zinc telluride
(ZnTe) is considered as promising semiconductor due to its small band gap and their
activity in visible light. Regardless of its interesting properties, ZnTe exhibit fast e- h+
recombination rate as a result of which overall photocatalytic activity is affected. In
addition, nanocompoistes with varying ZnTe content were synthesized using solid state
grinding. The prepared catalysts were analyzed via several characterization techniques
including x-ray diffraction (XRD) for the phase confirmation, scanning electron
microscopy (SEM) to investigate the surface morphology, electron dispersive x-ray
(EDX) for the compositional analysis, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and UVVis
diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS) to plot the alignment of energy levels with the
help of valence band position and band gap, respectively. All the synthesized samples
were used for the degradation of CR dye. High photocatalytic degradation efficiency of ~
97.6% was observed over the composite with equal amounts of both ZnTe and NRGO,
which might be attributed to the reduced charge recombination.
