Bio-genic synthesis of calcium coated zinc oxide nanoparticles from beetroot extract and their photo-degradation study on methylene blue and rhodamine B

Abstract

The advent of nanotechnology has helped in several invention in science & technology. Contamination of surface water, ground and soil by various industrial dyes causes several ecological problems. Zinc oxide nanoparticles as photocatalysts and semiconductor materials show unique physical properties at the nanoscale and can be used to solve these problems to some extent. In this paper, we synthesized ZnO NPs and calcium-coated ZnO nanoparticles using extract of beetroot and then, for industrial point of view, we studied the photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue and rhodamine B using sun as a natural light source (sunlight). We have synthesized calcium-coated ZnO nanocomposites with 20–50 nm particle size. Synthesized nanomaterials were characterized by using the different physio-chemical techniques such as - FT-IR, XRD, TEM, SEM, EDX and UV-spectrophotometer do their photocatalytic degradation.

Keywords

• Beet root extract
• Zinc oxide
• Photocatalyst
• Rhodamine B
• Methylene blue
• Degradation