Morphological influence of ZnO nanostructures and their Cu loaded composites for effective photodegradation of methyl parathion

Abstract This report signifies the synthesis of ZnO nanorods, cotton ball like structures, nanospheres and their Cu loaded counterparts for effective photocatalytic degradation of methyl parathion pesticide under UV light. Pesticides accumulation in ecosystem becomes major problem which affects health. Zinc oxide is a promising photocatalyst for degradation of pesticides and dyes because of its higher stability, low cost and non-toxic nature. Herein, the synthesized catalysts were characterised by diffused reflectance spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy techniques and transmission electron microscopy. ZnO nanorods (ZNR) proved to be better catalyst as compare to other synthesized nanostructures because of its elongated morphology. ZNR were nearly 1.4 times more efficient than ZnO cotton ball like structures. Moreover, photocatalytic activity was also enhanced by Cu loading due to low recombination rate of excitons. Cu loaded ZNR were found to degrade whole compound up to 99% in just 80 min whereas bare ZNR took 3 h under similar conditions. Thus, efficiency of Cu-ZNR had been increased nearly 6 folds as that of bare ZNR.