Cerium-Oxide-Nanoparticle-Decorated Zinc Oxide with Enhanced Photocatalytic Degradation of Methyl Orange

Cerium-oxide-nanoparticle-decorated zinc oxide was successfully prepared using a simple one-pot hydrothermal technique with different weight% Ce doping. It was found that an increase in Ce doping has an effect on the optical energy band-gap tunability. Ce dopant provides electron trapping on Ce/ZnO nanocomposites and also acts as a surface defect generator during hydrothermal processing. Additionally, a bi-metal oxide heterojunction forms, which acts as a charge separator to obstruct charge recombination and to increase the photodegradation performance. It was found that the methyl orange (MO) degradation performance improved with an increase in Ce doping. The decomposition of MO went from 69.42% (pristine ZnO) to 94.06% (7% Ce/ZnO) after 60 min under fluorescent lamp illumination.