Photodegradation of organic dye by zinc oxide microstructures decorated with silver Nanoparticles : Effect of different annealing temperature / Nor Atikah Embong

In this study, zinc oxide (ZnO) microstructures decorated with AgNPs were
synthesized via sol gel method. The resulting ZnO catalyst was characterized
by X-ray Diffraction (XRD), Field Effect Electron Microscopy (FESEM) and
Electron Dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS). XRD analysis show average
crystallite size have an increasing pattern of crystallite size in the range of
79.44 - 103.89 nm for pure ZnO and AgZnO at different annealing
temperature. ranging from 500 until 900°C. AgZnO-700°C has a smaller
particle size than pure ZnO and other samples. The FESEM results exhibit the
morphology AgZnO produced was spherical in shape for annealing
temperature of 500 DC and bigger and coarsen particle for AgZnO annealed in
900 Dc. The AgZnO samples were tested for photodegradation of Methylene
Blue (MB), under UV light. The parameter affecting the degradation
performance had been investigated is the effect of different annealing
temperature of AgZnO. The results shows AgZnO at annealing temperature of
700°C is the optimum annealing temperature as it performed higher k value
compared to other samples.