Facile green synthesis of ZnO/ZrO2 nanocomposite for photocatalytic degradation and chromium (VI) reduction

In the field of nanoscience, using plant materials to create nanoparticles (NPs) is becoming growing in popularity and offers a number of benefits over physicochemical techniques. The green combustion approach effectively synthesized ZnO/ZrO₂ nanocomposite (NCs) using powdered Butea monosperma (BM) leaf as the green fuel. The nature of NCs was confirmed through (X-ray Diffraction) XRD revealed that presence of hexagonal ZnO and cubic of ZrO₂ phase. The morphology of NCs as seen by (Scanning Electron Microscopy) SEM and (Transmission Electron Microscopy) TEM reveals a fair distribution and non-uniform spherical shape. (Energy Dispersive X-Ray Analysis) EDAX pattern indicates the presence of zinc, zirconium and oxygen components. (Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy) FT-IR spectrum obtained the metal–oxygen bonding in NCs. By applying the Tauc relation to calculate the optical energy band gap value of the sample is 3.34 eV. UV light is used to conduct the investigation of photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue (MB) dye. The NCs have superior degradation efficiency up to 99 % dye degradation is performed in 150 min. Furthermore, NCs exhibit a hazardous chromium (VI) decrease of up to 62 %. The collected results demonstrated that ZnO/ZrO₂ NCs are the best photocatalyst for MB degradation and chromium reduction.