Surfactant-assisted synthesis of copper oxide nanorods for the enhanced photocatalytic degradation of Reactive Black 5 dye in wastewater

In this study, copper oxide nanorods were synthesized via surfactant-assisted chemical precipitation method and characterized by using X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and UV-Visible spectrometer. XRD result reveals that CuO nanorods were structured in the monoclinic phase. SEM image suggested that synthesized CuO were shaped like nanorod with approximately 20-40 nm width and 500-800 nm length. The observed band gap calculated from UV-Visible absorption studies is 1.45 eV. As-prepared CuO nanorods were applied as a photocatalyst for the degradation of textile dye Reactive Black 5 (RB-5) in aqueous solution under the presence of visible light. The result exhibited that an enhanced degradation of RB-5 was achieved around 98% within 300 min and the experimental values were well matched with the linear fit model (R-2 = 0.97) and the observed rate constant found to be 5 x 10(-3) min(-1). Therefore, as-synthesized CuO nanorods can be applied as a potential photocatalyst material for the degradation of organic pollutants in the wastewater.