Abstract
Sustainable fabrication of photocatalyst for rapid degradation of organic pollutants is one of the great research focuses of the present time. In the current study, a sustainable and scalable sol-gel synthesis of ZnO-Co3O4 nanocomposites is reported using the organic compounds of Abies pindrow Royle plant leaves. This binary nanocomposite was synthesized by treating precursor solution with plant organic complex, and sequent transformation to ZnO-Co3O4 is achieved by thermal annealing metal organic framework-derived mixture in air. The p-XRD has indicated that the newly synthesized binary nanocomposite is well crystalline with pure phases of binary oxides. Furthermore, we have analyzed the incorporated organic species of the plant leaves in the synthesized material and their effects on degradation of sodium;4-[[4-(dimethylamino)phenyl]diazenyl] benzenesulfonate (methyl orange). The synthesized nanocomposite was employed as a catalyst to degrade methyl orange in an aqueous environment in light as well as under dark ambient conditions, without any light or stimulants. It was revealed that bio-organic framework-derived ZnO-Co3O4 catalyst exhibited the excellent catalytic potential to degrade MO with 73% and 99% degradation efficiency under dark and light conditions, respectively, within 15 min. Furthermore, the catalysts illustrated good stability with pseudo-first-order kinetics (R-2 < 1) in the light as well as in the dark conditions. Therefore, the synthesized nanocatalyst obtained by phytosynthesis route has provided an economic and fast approach towards remediation of organic pollutants.