Rare earth doped zinc oxide semiconductors:A green nano- semiconductor for future's energy demands

The producing of a photocatalytic system which could perform under visible irradiation of sunlight is a challenging issue. In this direct, rare earth metals-doped in ZnO semiconductors could improve the variation of the band gap, accordingly, maximize the photocatalic performance. Hence, the introduction of new semiconductors which exploit UV light of sunlight (approximately ۵۷% of sunlight) is vital toward fulfilling the future energy demands. In this research, La-doped ZnO nanocomposites (La@ZnONCs) with different La contents were fabricated via green method using biomass of Rosehip (the fruit extract of a wild dog rose). The as-prepared nanocomposites were characterized with different techniques and the obtained results shows that the La@ZnONCs exhibits better activities than the pure ZnO in degradation of ۴-nitrophenol (۴-NP). This work reports, for the first time, a very facile as well as green method for the fabrication of La-doped and other rare-earth doped semiconductors by using biomass. In addition, we have presented the results of study on photocatalytic mechanism of La@ZnO to remove ۴-NP, as a model of environmental pollutants under sunlight irradiations instead of other energy resources