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Facile Synthesis of ZnO-CeO2 Heterojunction by Mixture Design and Its Application in Triclosan Degradation: Effect of
Antonia Cáceres-Hernández1, Jose Gilberto Torres-Torres1, Adib Silahua-Pavón1
1Laboratorio de Nanomateriales Catalíticos Aplicados al Desarrollo de Fuentes de Energía y Remediación Ambiental, Centro de Investigación de Ciencia y Tecnología Aplicada de Tabasco (CICTAT), DACB, Universidad Juárez Autónoma de Tabasco, Km.1 carretera Cunduacán-Jalpa de Méndez, C.P. Cunduacán 86690, TB, Mexico.
Abstract:
In this study, simplex centroid mixture design was employed to determine the effect of urea on ZnO-CeO. The heterojunction materials were synthesized using a solid-state combustion method, and the physicochemical properties were evaluated using X-ray diffraction, nitrogen adsorption/desorption, and UV-Vis spectroscopy. Photocatalytic activity was determined by a triclosan degradation reaction under UV irradiation. According to the results, the crystal size of zinc oxide decreases in the presence of urea, whereas a reverse effect was observed for cerium oxide. A similar trend was observed for ternary samples, i.e., the higher the proportion of urea, the larger the crystallite cerium size. In brief, urea facilitated the co-existence of crystallites of CeO and ZnO. On the other hand, UV spectra indicate that urea shifts the absorption edge to a longer wavelength. Studies of the photocatalytic activity of TCS degradation show that the increase in the proportion of urea favorably influenced the percentage of mineralization.
