Photocatalytic studies of zinc oxide (zoo) / nickel (ni) / graphene oxide (go) nanocomposite for the degradation of methyl orange dye under ultraviolet (uv) light irradiation / Muhammad Syahmi Basir

Recently, ZnO was received more attention as promising photocatalyst for
the treatment of dyes an organic pollutant. However, rapid recombination
of photogenerated electron hole pairs is the one of major limitation of ZnO
that can be influenced on the photocatalytic activity efficiency. In this study,
modification of ZnO by co-doped with nickel (Ni) and graphene oxide (GO)
at variation weight of 0.1 to 0.4 g can increase the efficiency of
photocatalytic activity. The evaluation of photocatalytic activity has been
done using methyl orange dye at concentration of 10mg/L under UV light
irradiation. Moreover, recyclability of the highest efficiency photocatalyst
also has been tested. Results indicate that ZnO / Ni / GO O.4g photocatalyst
exhibits the highest percentage of photodegradation of 74.06 % and
photodegradation rate constant, k of 0.0201 min-l for degradation of methyl
orange for 60 min under UV irradiation. The present of GO as co-doped to
ZnO described the contribution for enhancement of photocatalytic activity
due to increasing of photogenerated electron-hole pair period during
photocatalysis process. Also, this photocatalyst also can maintain 59.60 %
of percentage photodegradation after five cycles in the recyclability test due
to great photostability.