Nitrogen doped RGO Supported ZnTe Nanocomposites for Photodegradation of Congo red dye

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.