Abstract
Water pollution is the biggest concern among the scientific community due to the rapid increase in the industrial sector. The photocatalytic degradation of dyes using nanocomposites (NCs) has gained much attention for wastewater treatment. The NCs of polyorthoethylaniline (POEANI) with zinc oxide (ZnO) were fabricated through the chemical oxidative polymerization technique using orthoethylaniline monomer and nanoparticles of ZnO. The synthesized NCs were characterized by SEM, FT-IR, and XRD. The photocatalytic capability of ZnO/POEANI NCs was studied for the degradation of direct yellow 50 (DY50) in aqueous medium under sunlight. SEM analysis showed that the morphology of NCs as irregular clusters and zinc oxide was uniformly dispersed in the POEANI matrix. The maximum degradation of the dye DY50 was observed to be 68.8% after 110 min. The synthesized morphology of the materials can be confidently employed for the degradation of similar dyes in aqueous media.