Abstract
In this work, an eco-friendly, facile, and efficient method has been applied for CuO nanostructures (NSs) synthesis using ascorbic acid as capping agent. For surface morphology, FESEM analysis was applied to reveal nanostructure with similar to 100 nm length, and similar to 90 nm width morphology which was also supported by TEM images of CuO. Thus obtained CuO NSs resulted in an optical energy having similar to 1.36 eV band gap obtained from Tauc plots of UV-visible plots because of strong quantum confinement effect of nanoparticles. XRD reveals a monoclinic phase of CuO NSs for which follow the reference JCPDS No. 98-004-3179 (Space group of C 12/c 1) crystal structure with high crystallinity of similar to 95.94% and crystallite size of similar to 38 nm. In addition, Williamson-Hall analysis was applied to calculate crystal lattice strain of similar to 3.01 x 10(-3) for CuO catalyst followed by 28.36 m(2)/g high BET surface area (0.9999 correlation coefficient) having similar to 14.38 nm average BJH pore size. Furthermore, CuO NSs exhibited ultrafast and high catalytic degradation efficiency of similar to 90.54% for Allura Red AC dye (AR dye) in 480 s under UV light. The photodegradation kinetics followed a pseudo first-order reaction with rate constant (k) of similar to 0.0046 s(-1) having approximately similar to 150.65 s of half-life (t(1/2)) for AR dyes in the aquatic medium as per the Langmuir-Hinshelwood model. As synthesized catalyst, CuO NSs explored good leaf-like morphology with high recycling ability after five degradation cycles of AR dye in aqueous medium.