Comparative study of pure and Ni/Co, Gd3+, and Tb3+ doped zinc oxide nanoparticles for photocatalytic degradation and antibacterial activities

Zinc oxide (ZnO) Nanoparticles were synthesized with Ni/Co, Gd3+, and Tb3+ doping using coprecipitation method under normal suitable conditions. These prepared pure and doped ZnO nanoparticles were characterized for size, surface, structural and optical properties with the help of scanning electron microscopy (SEM), particle size analyser, fluorescence microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), and UV-Vis spectroscopy. Due to doping effect, the band gap varies from 3.20 eV to 3.35 eV and shows the blue shift. Further, the as-characterized pure and doped ZnO NPs are used for photocatalytic degradation and antibacterial activities. The results show that there is presence of antibacterial activities from these characterized ZnO NPs. The Tb3+ and Gd3+-doped ZnO NPs show high photocatalytic degradation for Victoria blue B dye and also suppress the bacterial activities of Staphylococcus Aureus bacteria. Therefore, we can conclude that by reducing the band gap of ZnO NPs through doping with Tb3+ and Gd3+ can be further used in making Nanoelectronics devices, sensing applications, photovoltaic, food, cosmetics and medicine industry. Copyright © 2016 American Scientific Publishers All rights reserved.