One‐step synthesis of novel flower‐like Sn‐doped ZnO architectures with enhanced photocatalytic activity

Abstract

A facile hydrothermal method to synthesize flower‐like Sn‐doped ZnO (FLSn‐ZnO) nanostructures is described. The obtained hierarchical architectures of FLSn‐ZnO are found to be assembled with abundant regular‐shaped nanosheets and nanoparticles. A possible formation mechanism is proposed on the base of a series of control experiments. The tests show that FLSn‐ZnO architectures exhibit higher photocatalytic activity in the degrading Rhodamine B and tetracycline aqueous solution than pure ZnO under UV‐light irradiation. And photocurrent response and photoluminescence of ZnO and FLSn‐ZnO demonstrates that in photocatalytic performance, the latter is higher.