Abstract
The use of plant extract for the synthesis of nanomaterials has been preferred over conventional growth techniques due to its safety, simple, ecofriendly, cost-effective and biocompatibility properties. The present study includes environmentally friendly approach for synthesis of ZnO-NPs using milky sap of Calotropis procera (CP) parts. The biosynthesized ZnO-NPs were investigated in terms of crystalline, morphology, and optical characterization. The CP has resulted spherical-shaped oriented nanoparticles, hexagonal phase and significantly reduced crystallite size of - 26.1 nm. The photodegradation of malachite green (MG) and methyl blue (MB) dye under the illumination of UV light was investigated using biosynthesized ZnO-NPs. The effect of different volumes of milky sap of CP was considered as a point of care to demonstrate its role towards the enhancement of photodegradation effectiveness of ZnO against two different organic dyes like malachite and methylene blue owing their issues raised for aquaculture and worsen environmental impacts. The degradation of both dyes was followed by pseudo first-order kinetics and highest volume of milky sap of CP has given out high rate constant value. The degradation efficiency of milky sap of CP-assisted ZnO nanostructures was found about 85.3% and 86.3% for MG and MB, respectively. However, we studied the effect of pH of dye solution on the photocatalytic performance of ZnO and it has revealed highly enhanced degradation efficiency. The increased functionality of ZnO was connected to the reduced particle size, optical bandgap, and tunable surface properties with the use of terminal oxygenated groups.