H2O2-based Green Corrosion Route to ZnO Microrods Photocatalysts on Zn Plate

Single crystal ZnO microrods are deposited on the surface of Zn plate through corrosion of Zn plate by H2O2 which is a green neutral reagent and easy to transform to H2O and O2. The structure and morphology of the obtained ZnO microrods were characterized by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy and electron diffraction. A thermodynamics mechanism was brought up. It was found that the transformation from Zn to ZnO is mainly attributed to that H2O2 possessing enough redox potential oxidizes the Zn. At the same time, the photodegradation properties of the obtained ZnO microrods array were also evaluated. The obtained wurtize-type ZnO microrods show an effective degradation for methyl orange under ultraviolet, and it keeps a good efficiency during the ten repeated photocatalytic tests. The results demonstrate a potential of obtained ZnO/Zn in real application of water pollutant photodegradation, making them promising candidates for the wastewater treatment.