4. International Dicle Scientific Research and Innovation Congress, Diyarbakır, Türkiye, 18 - 19 Nisan 2023, ss.1
Photocatalysts
are semiconductor materials which create a strong oxidizing environment on the
surface when exposed to light. They absorb the light and convert it to a
high-energy state, transfer this energy to reactive materials and initiate a
chemical reaction. Many transition metal complexes such as titanium dioxide
(TiO2), tungsten oxide (WO3), iron (III) oxide (Fe2O3),
cadmium sulfide (CdS) and zinc oxide (ZnO) are widely used in various environmental
processes including organic waste degradation and photochemical or
photobiological degradation of different organic pollutants. Graphene oxide
(GO) is a material that has a characteristic density and specific heat and is
prominent with its excellent mechanical and thermal properties. Graphene oxide
is known to enhance the photocatalytic performance of transition metal
complexes. In the literature, there are many GO-doped photocatalysts that have
been synthesized by different methods, generally in aqueous media, and used as
catalysts in various reactions. Especially, photocatalysts containing ZnO
attached to GO layers seem to have an excellent advantage in terms of high
photocatalytic efficiency and usability in environmental problems. In this study,
it was aimed to synthesize ZnO/GO photocatalyst by solid state mechanical
mixing followed by calcination instead of wet method using GO, which is
synthesized from a very cheap material pencil by Hummer’s method. The obtained
photocatalyst was tried to be characterized by methods such as Fourier
transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning
electron microscopy (SEM).