Abstract
The designing of highly specific visible light responsive photocatalysts requires highly dedicative efforts and still a challenging task. The current work focused to design a decidedly novel visible-light derived ternary photocatalyst based on ZnO nanostructures in conjugation with activated carbon (AC) and gold (Au) nanoparticles for environmental remediation task. The AC and AuNPs doped ZnO ternary frameworks were produced by the hydrothermal approach followed by ultra-sonication technique. The XRD data revealed hexagonal wurtzite form of ZnO while the XPS and FTIR investigation confirmed the creation of highly capable framework in conjugation with AC, AuNPs, and ZnO. The TEM images clearly revealed that AuNPs (4–10 nm) were uniformly dispersed onto ZnO nanoparticles (20–80 nm) and the AC possesses sheets like morphology (stacking pattern arrangement). The UV–vis examination demonstrates a lowering of energy band gap upon the incorporation of AC and AuNPs into ZnO matrix. The newly designed novel ternary AC@Au/ZnO photocatalyst was applied for the photocatalytic destruction of gemifloxacin mesylate antibiotic drug under visible light illumination. The impeccable AC@Au/ZnO organization displayed astonishing results with 98.0% destruction of gemifloxacin mesylate drug. The newly fabricated AC@Au/ZnO framework showed the highest degradation efficiency, which was 2.21 times compared to bare ZnO. Additionally, the AC@Au/ZnO ternary framework was found to be highly detrimental during the photodegradation of methylene blue (MB) dye under visible light illumination.