Annealing effects on photocatalytic activity of ZnS films prepared by chemical bath deposition

The development of high-efficiency ZnS photocatalyst is of great importance from scientific and practical viewpoints. We investigate the effects of annealing on the photocatalytic activity of ZnS films prepared using chemical bath deposition. The increasing of annealing temperature and heating rate increases the crystallinity and the mean grain size of ZnS films, and significantly enhances the absorption in the visible region. The annealed ZnS films exhibit considerable visible light photocatalytic activity, which is associated with the presence of sulfur vacancies, the larger size grain, and the higher crystallinity. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.