UV–Visible light driven photocatalytic activities of CdS nanoparticles supported ZnO layers

CdS nanoparticles (NPs), ZnO layers, and CdS/ZnO composite were successfully prepared by a two-step chemical method. From the analysis of XRD, cubic CdS and the hexagonal ZnO phase were described for the synthesized samples. The CdS/ZnO composite exhibited larger surface area (99.9 m² g⁻¹) than pure CdS NPs (50.5 m² g⁻¹) and ZnO layers (67.3 m² g⁻¹), respectively. The band gap energies evaluated from the DRS results were 3.40, 2.13 and 1.78 eV for pure ZnO, CdS and CdS/ZnO composite respectively. The photocatalytic activity of the prepared materials was studied by the degradation of dye in aqueous solution under UV–Visible light exposure. CdS/ZnO composite exhibited the superior photocatalytic activity than ZnO and CdS. The photocatalytic performance was achieved 91.5% degradation in composite sample.