Special Issue Article Open Access

Photo Catalytic Study of Agriculture Leachant Water Using Ceramic Based Thin Films

Abstract

Pesticides are group of artificially synthesized substances, toxic and non-biodegradable in the environment and are subjected to some chemical processes of degradation, hydrolysis, oxidation, and photo catalysis. In this work, ceramic based thin films were prepared to reduce the toxic nature of pesticides. To enhance the catalytic activity of this thin films, leachant water is incorporated with zinc oxide, thereby pesticides degraded to lower concentration. Zinc oxide (ZnO) and zinc sulphide (ZnS) thin films were prepared and characterized using SEM, AFM, XRD and FT-IR. Using photoluminescence Spectra (PL), the photo catalytic activity of nanoparticles were studied by observing the peak obtained at reduced wavelength of about 384 nm and enhanced band gap energy of about 3.2 eV for zinc oxide nanoparticles whereas zinc sulphide nanoparticle shows 3.7 eV . Using UV-Vis, degradation of pesticides in the leachant water was observed by exposing the thin film in the sunlight at various interval of time. Thus, zinc oxide thin film shows better degradation of pesticides when compared to zinc sulphide.

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