Ethylenediamine assisted synthesis of wurtzite zinc sulphide nanosheets and porous zinc oxide nanostructures: near white light photoluminescence emission and photocatalytic activity under visible light irradiation

Porous fungus-like ZnO nanostructures have been synthesized by simple thermal annealing of the hydrothermally synthesized sheet-like ZnS(en)0.5 complex precursor in air at 600 °C. Structural and morphological changes occurring during ZnS(en)0.5 → ZnS → ZnO transformations have been observed closely by annealing the as-synthesized precursor at 100–600 °C. Wurtzite ZnS nanosheets and ZnS–ZnO composites are obtained at temperatures of 400 °C and 500 °C, respectively. Thermal decomposition and oxidation of the ZnS(en)0.5 nanosheets have been confirmed by differential scanning calorimetry and thermo-gravimetric analysis. The visible light driven photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue dye has been demonstrated in the synthesized samples. ZnS–ZnO composite shows the highest dye degradation efficiency of 74% due to the formation of surface complex as well as higher visible light absorption as a result of band-gap narrowing effect. The porous ZnO nanostructures show efficient visible photoluminescence (PL) emission with a colour coordinate of (0.29, 0.35), which is close to that of white light (0.33, 0.33). The efficient visible PL emission as well as visible light driven photocatalytic activity of the materials synthesized in the present work might be very attractive for their applications in future optoelectronic devices, including in white light emitting devices.