Facile tartaric acid assisted microwave synthesis of spherical clusters of S, N, and C doped ZnO for solar photocatalytic applications

In this work, C, N, and S doped spherical clusters of ZnO nanoparticles were synthesized through the microwave-assisted polymeric gelation method. The prepared samples were characterized using XRD, FT-IR, SEM, TEM, and UV–Visible spectrophotometer. The efficacy of doped ZnO in degrading an organic pollutant, methylene blue, was photo catalytically investigated under sunlight illuminations. The UV–Vis. spectrophotometric studies show that S and N doped ZnO deliver excellent photocatalytic properties when compared to bare C doped ZnO. The samples followed the trend in photocatalytic activity as C- ZnO < N-ZnO < S- ZnO, with the effective time of dye degradation as 180 min, 140 min and 120 min. respectively, following their decreasing crystallite size and bandgap energy.