Facile one-pot synthesis of heterostructure SnO/ZnO photocatalyst for enhanced photocatalytic degradation of organic dye.

In this work, heterostructure SnO/ZnO nanocomposite photocatalyst was prepared by a straightforward one step polyol method. The resulting photocatalysts were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), nitrogen adsorption-desorption analyses, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (UV-vis DRS). The results showed that the synthesized SnO/ZnO nanocomposites possessed mesoporous wurtzite ZnO and cassiterite SnO nanocrystallites. The photocatalytic activity of the prepared SnO/ZnO photocatalyst was investigated by the degradation of methylene blue dye under UV light irradiation. The heterostructure SnO/ZnO photocatalyst showed much higher photocatalytic activities for the degradation of methylene blue dye than individual SnO, ZnO nanomaterials and reference commercial TiO P25. This higher photocatalytic degradation activity was due to enhanced charge separation and subsequently the suppression of charge recombination in the SnO/ZnO photocatalyst resulting from band offsets between SnO and ZnO. Finally, these heterostructure SnO/ZnO nanocatalysts were stable and could be recycled several times without any appreciable change in degradation rate constant which opens new avenues toward potential industrial applications.