Facile fabrication of novel ZnO/CoMoO4 nanocomposites: Highly efficient visible-light-responsive photocatalysts in degradations of different contaminants

Abstract A facile route was adopted to fabricate p-n heterojunction ZnO/CoMoO 4 photocatalysts through a refluxing method followed by calcination process. The resulting ZnO/CoMoO 4 nanocomposites were characterized by means of XRD, EDX, FESEM, HRTEM, XPS, UV–vis DRS, FT-IR, BET, and PL techniques. The photocatalytic degradation of rhodamine B was chosen to investigate photocatalytic performances. Compared to the reference materials of ZnO and CoMoO 4 , the ZnO/CoMoO 4 nanocomposites showed much higher photocatalytic activity and the ZnO/CoMoO 4 (30%) sample possessed the highest efficiency, which is 19.6 and 6.26 folds greater relative to the ZnO and CoMoO 4 , respectively. The results demonstrated that the p-n heterojunction between ZnO and CoMoO 4 could significantly boost the photocatalytic efficiency through highly promoted separation of electron/hole pairs as well as extended absorption to visible light. Finally, the highly enhanced performances of the ZnO/CoMoO 4 (30%) nanocomposite in removal of three more organic pollutants including methylene blue, methyl orange, and fuchsine were confirmed, which indicates the potential of this nanocomposite for practical applications.