Silica coating and photocatalytic activities of ZnO nanoparticles: effect of operational parameters and kinetic study.

Abstract Silica-coating ZnO nanoparticles were prepared using the hydrothermal method. The prepared nanoparticles were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDX). It was found that ultrafine core/shell structured silica-coating ZnO nanoparticles were successfully obtained. TEM analysis revealed a continuous and uniform silica coating layer of about 8 nm in thickness on the surface of ZnO nanoparticles. The photocatalytic performance of silica-coating ZnO core/shell nanoparticles in methylene blue aqueous solution was investigated. The effects of some operational parameters such as pH value, nanocatalyst loading and initial MB concentration on the degradation efficiency were discussed. Kinetic parameters were experimentally determined and a pseudo-first-order kinetic was observed. Thus, the main advantage of the coating is the stability of the photocatalysts and the better performance in acidic or alkaline solutions. Compared to ZnO the maximum apparent rate constant is obtained at pH 8.5 (pH 11.5 in case of bare ZnO). Moreover, the Langmuir adsorption model was applied to describe the equilibrium isotherm at different MB concentration. The applicability of the Langmuir isotherm suggests monolayer coverage of the MB onto surface of silica-coating ZnO nanoparticles. The kinetics of the adsorption with respect to the initial dye concentration, were also investigated. The pseudo-first-order and second-order kinetic models were used and the rate constants were evaluated. The kinetic studies revealed that the pseudo-second-order kinetic model better represented the adsorption kinetics, suggesting that the adsorption process may be chemisorption.