TY - JOUR A1 - Chouchene, Bilel A1 - Ben Chaabane, Tahar A1 - Balan, Lavinia A1 - Girot, Emilien A1 - Mozet, Kevin A1 - Medjahdi, Ghouti A1 - Schneider, Raphaël T1 - High performance Ce-doped ZnO nanorods for sunlight-driven photocatalysis JF - Beilstein Journal of Nanotechnology PY - 2016/// VL - 7 SP - 1338 EP - 1349 SN - 2190-4286 DO - 10.3762/bjnano.7.125 PB - Beilstein-Institut JA - Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. UR - https://doi.org/10.3762/bjnano.7.125 KW - Ce doping KW - photocatalysis KW - solvothermal synthesis KW - ZnO rods N2 - Ce-doped ZnO (ZnO:Ce) nanorods have been prepared through a solvothermal method and the effects of Ce-doping on the structural, optical and electronic properties of ZnO rods were studied. ZnO:Ce rods were characterized by XRD, SEM, TEM, XPS, BET, DRS and Raman spectroscopy. 5% Ce-doped ZnO rods with an average length of 130 nm and a diameter of 23 nm exhibit the highest photocatalytic activity for the degradation of the Orange II dye under solar light irradiation. The high photocatalytic activity is ascribed to the substantially enhanced light absorption in the visible region, to the high surface area of ZnO:Ce rods and to the effective electron–hole pair separation originating from Ce doping. The influence of various experimental parameters like the pH, the presence of salts and of organic compounds was investigated and no marked detrimental effect on the photocatalytic activity was observed. Finally, recyclability experiments demonstrate that ZnO:Ce rods are a stable solar-light photocatalyst. ER -