Synthesis, characterisation and adsorption/photocatalytic performance of ZnO/CdS flowers

A ZnO/CdS composite with flower-like morphology was fabricated by combining a solvothermal route with a homogeneous precipitation process. The material characterisation showed that the composite was composed of hexagonal ZnO flowers and cubic CdS nanoparticles, and CdS nanoparticles were observed to assemble on the surface of the ZnO flowers. The presence of CdS nanoparticles on the surface of ZnO flowers resulted in a blue shift of characteristic peaks and decreasing of the photoluminescence intensity when compared with the ZnO flowers. Furthermore, the adsorption or photocatalytic degradation experiments indicated that the as-prepared ZnO/CdS composite exhibited superior adsorption or photocatalytic degradation activities for some organic dyes, such as methyl orange, rhodamine B, safranine T and methylene blue, which may be related to the modification of the CdS nanoparticles.