Diode characteristics, piezo-photocatalytic antibiotic degradation and hydrogen production of Ce 3+ doped ZnO nanostructures.

Piezo-photocatalysis of ZnO nanostructures had recently well attracted due to their exceptional potential in degrading the antibiotics and scalable hydrogen production. Here, we have synthesized the Ce ³⁺ doped ZnO nanospheres in a facile wet chemical strategy. Dopant ions induced morphological evolution and optical bandgap tuning had observed in our experiment. Optical absorbance spectrum had confirmed the bandgap shortening occurs with Ce ³⁺ doped ZnO specimens. The bandgap gap value had reduced to 2.82 eV from 3.05eV confirming the visible light responsivity of ZnO nano specimens. Obtained Zn _(1-x) Ce _x O nanospheres were utilized to fabricate the p-Si/n- Zn _(1-x) Ce _x O heterojunction diodes as well studied the improved electrical conductivity for the Ce ³⁺ specimen-based diodes. Besides, ideality factor and barrier height values of the heterojunction diodes ZnO/p-Si, Zn _0.99 Ce _0.01 O/p-Si, Zn _0.97 Ce _0.03 O/p-Si, and Zn _0.95 Ce _0.05 O/p-Si are 15.97 & 0.43 eV, 15.47 & 0.44 eV, 8.02 & 0.46 eV and 5.21 & 0.47 eV, respectively. Direct sunlight assisted piezo-photocatalytic tetracycline (TC) degradation efficiency of ZnO, Zn _0.99 Ce _0.01 O, Zn _0.97 Ce _0.03 O, and Zn _0.95 Ce _0.05 O nanostructures respectively are 64%, 69%, 74% and 82%. We have produced the hydrogen quantity of 1234 μ mol h ^-1 , 1490 μ mol h ^-1 , 1750 μ mol h ^-1 and 1980 μ mol h ^-1 with 0%, 1%, 3% and 5% Ce ³⁺ doped ZnO specimens under the direct sunlight assisted piezo-photocatalytic H ₂ production from H ₂ S splitting.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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