Highly porous, hierarchical peanut-like Ecandrewsite binary metal oxide nanostructures for the high-efficiency detoxification of organic dyes from wastewater

Abstract

A facile and simple strategy was developed to fabricate Ecandrewsite-type nanostructured catalysts using wet chemical synthesis. The proposed catalyst shows promising results in photo/electro catalysts to purify water -based organic dye impurities, such as methylene blue (MB) and Congo red (CR). The morphological evolution of the nanocatalysts was performed using the surface-active agent Cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB). X-ray diffraction patterns confirm that the fabricated materials belong to the ZnTiO3 with high purity. The mi-crographs of all the sample were highly uniform with respect to the CTAB ratio. ZnTiO3-2 nanostructured ma-terial degraded MB and CR with 96% efficiency in 90 min under UV-vis light illumination. In addition, as-prepared ZnTiO3-2 catalyst was shown to be very efficient in breaking down MB and CR, with degradation rates of 91% and 96% in 36 h, respectively.