Green synthesis of ZnZrO3 nanoparticles using tragacanth gel and its photocatalytic activity study in the degradation of malachite green dye under visible light irradiation

The removal of organic pollutants in wastewater is a huge task in environmental protection, because they have led to serious contamination in many countries worldwide. Photosensitized degradation on an applicable catalyst has been proven to be the most widely used method. Therefore, searching for a catalyst with high efficiency has caught much attention for good piezoelectric properties, catalytic properties and damping properties [1,2]. Perovskite oxides are one of the most widely investigated classes of materials due to their important physical properties in ferroelectricity, piezoelectricity, dielectricity, ferromagnetism, magnetoresistance, and multiferroics, which find a widely variety of applications in ferroelectric random access memories, multilayer ceramic capacitors, sensors and actuators, magnetic random access memories, and the potential new types of multiple-state memories and spintronic devices controlled by electric and magnetic fields [3,4]. In this work, perovskite ZnZrO3 nanoparticles have been synthesized from the reaction of zinc nitrate ((Zn(NO3)2 .6H2O), zirconium(IV) chloride (ZrCl4) as precursors and water as the solvent, in the presence of tragacanth gel as a novel biotemplate and chelating agent by the sol-gel method. The product was characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive analysis of X-ray (EDAX) and UV-vis spectroscopy (UV-vis). XRD data confirmed the formation of nanostructure perovskite zinc zirconate (ZnZrO3) nanoparticles. Effects of some parameters such as amount of catalyst, irradiation time and initial dye concentration were studied and obtained results demonstrated that the degradation efficiency was affected by initial concentration of the dye.