Project Abstract

Zinc oxide has attracted much attention due to its tunable wavelength properties through carbon doping. This material has shown promising photo-catalytic activities due to its non-toxic, inexpensive, and highly efficient nature.

However, ZnO's wide band gap hinders photo-excitation for practical photocatalytic applications under solar light as an abundant, clean and safe energy source. To overcome this barrier, many strategies, including emission properties studies, synthesis methods, and growth kinetics, have been developed.

Existing methods in cleaning and treating water remain relying on conventional treatment systems, which include screening, coagulation and flocculation, sand filtration, disinfection (chlorination) and fluoridation. As development becomes more rampant, especially industrialisation, river water quality becomes seriously deteriorated, plus the water characteristics become more complex with the existence of new contaminants.

This leads to increasing demands for the removal of organic pollutants due to their harmful effect on the environment. Consequently, access to a clean and safe water supply has become a tremendous challenge for the water authorities to surmount. Recognising this, non-conventional water treatment methods such as photo-catalysis should be employed. Thus, there is a need to improve photo-catalysis efficiency.

This work studies the optical properties of carbon-doped ZnO to enhance photo-catalysis efficiency. New findings are expected on the effect of carbon content on the photoluminescence of ZnO powder towards the photo-catalysis performances. These expected results will be a breakthrough in the water treatment industry to eliminate organic pollutants in our water and to reduce environmental pollution.