Synthesized of Zeolite@Ag₂O Nanocomposite as Superb Stability Photocatalysis Toward Hazardous Rhodamine B Dye from Water

Over the past years, Ag₂O as an emerging photocatalyst has attracted extensive attention toward the removal of hazardous dye from aqueous media under visible light. However, Ag₂O suffers from major drawbacks such as low stability under sunlight irradiation and high recombination rate of photogenerated electron–hole pairs. In this study, to resolve this problem, a novel nanocomposite-based zeolite clay was successfully prepared using an eco-friendly and economical approach. The nanocomposite Zeolite@Ag₂O (Zeo@Ag₂O) was characterized by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray analysis Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, Brunauer, Emmett, and Teller surface area method and UV–Vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy. The obtained nanocomposite exhibited high photocatalytic efficiency for the removal of hazardous Rhodamine B dye from aqueous solution under visible light and the removal rate reached about 100%. Thus, the enhanced photocatalytic activity could be due to the better adsorption ability onto Zeo@Ag₂O nanocomposite surface and the high effective separation of photogenerated electron–hole pairs. Also, the obtained results show that both holes (h +) and hydroxyl radicals (HO°) play an important role in RhB degradation over the synthesized nanocomposite.