NOVEL AND EFFICIENT THREE DIMENSIONAL MESOPOROUS ZnO NANOASSEMBLIES FOR ENVIRNOMENTAL REMEDIATION

This work demonstrates the fabrication of a novel three-dimensional (3D) mesoporous spherical ZnO nanoassembly by soft-chemical approach. XRD analysis revealed the formation of single phase hexagonal wurtzite nanostructure. It has been observed that each nanoassembly (100-600 nm) is comprised of numerous nanocrystals of size about 20 nm. These assemblies are fairly stable, well-defined, discrete and porous. The predominance of mesopores is evident from TEM and porosity measurements. Methylene blue (MB) was used as model dye to investigate the photocatalytic activity of ZnO nanoassemblies. These nanoassemblies have good photocatalytic performance due to its unique porous 3D nanostructure having defects. Furthermore, the ZnO nanoassemblies were also explored for the purification toxic metal ions such as Co2+, Ni2+, Cu2+, Cd2+, Pb2+, Hg2+ and As3+ from waste-water.