Surfactant-Assisted Synthesis of NiO-ZnO and NiO-CuO Nanocomposites for Enhanced Photocatalytic Degradation of Methylene Blue Under UV Light Irradiation

The photocatalytic process over semiconducting oxide surfaces has attracted worldwide attention as a potentially efficient, environmentally friendly, and low-cost method for wastewater treatment. This study presents straightforward, inexpensive, rapid route the synthesis of nickel (NiO) its composites with zinc (NiO/ZnO) copper (NiO/CuO) nanoparticles through chemical precipitation using capping agent-hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) degradation methylene blue dye. structure, morphology, elemental constituents were characterized by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, energy-dispersive spectroscopy. energy band gap pure NiO, NiO-ZnO, NiO-CuO was evaluated Tauc plot from absorption spectra resulted 3.00, 2.90, 3.25 eV, respectively. optimum parameters all photocatalysts following: pH 8, irradiation time 175 min, catalyst amount 75 mg, dye concentration 7 mg/L. At these parameters, efficiency prepared toward MB achieved 89.8% 97% NiO/ZnO, 94.2% NiO/CuO. highest activity p-type/n-type nanocomposite is possibly due to electron–hole pair recombination inhibition charge transfer processes. Therefore, composite-based nanocatalysts such NiO/ZnO high are promising future industrial applications remove undesirable organic pollutants environment.