Abstract

The removal of dyes from industrial wastewater using visible-light driven catalyst is one of the major challenging issues. Vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) has a considerable attention as a promising visible light driven catalyst for degradation of organic pollutants due to its narrow bandgap. Nevertheless, fast recombination of electron–hole pairs in V2O5 catalyst limits its application in photodegradation. Photocatalytic performance of V2O5 can be improved by coupling with other semiconductors. In this study, we have synthesized V2O5/ZnO nanocomposites via simple thermal decomposition method. The formation of orthorhombic structured V2O5 and hexagonal structured ZnO was confirmed by powder X-ray diffraction analysis. HR-SEM result reveals the nanorod formation of prepared V2O5/ZnO composites. From EDX analysis, it was confirmed that the prepared nanocomposites are composed of vanadium, zinc and oxygen only. DRS spectrum shows the absorption edge of V2O5/ZnO in visible region of spectrum. Furthermore, the prepared catalyst is used for photodegradation of methylene blue (MB) under visible light irradiation.