Role of Metal Exchange toward the Morphology and Photocatalytic Activity of Cu/Ag/Au-Doped ZnO: A Study with a Zinc–Sodium Acetate Complex as the Precursor

The
present work disclosed a zinc­(II)–sodium acetate complex
(C32H48O34Na8Zn4, C-1), in which weakly bound sodium (Na) has been utilized
for selective metal exchange with guest metals (CuII and
AgI) for the synthesis of Cu/Ag/Au-loaded ZnO. The morphology,
growth, and band gap of the materials are found to be highly dependent
upon their metal-exchange capacity. The presence of Cu/Ag/Au with
ZnO improves the spectral response and effectively suppresses the
hole–electron pair recombination process to facilitate efficient
H2O2 production from water and oxygen under
visible light, and thus the compound was utilized as an efficient
reusable photocatalyst for the degradation and complete remediation
of various toxic phenols and dyes into CO2, NO3–, and SO42– in water.