Evaluation of Photocatalytic and Antibacterial Properties of Zno–Cuo Nanocomposites Synthesized by Sol-Gel Method

In this research CuO and ZnO and CuO-ZnO nanocomposites were synthesized using sol- gel method. The samples were characterized by DRS-UV, X-ray diffraction (XRD), and field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM). The results of XRD showed that the CuO and ZnO and ZnO-CuO composite are crystalline. The results of the DRS-UV analysis showed that the CuO, ZnO, and ZnO-CuO composite, respectively, have a mean band gap of 1.27 and 3.21 and 2.43 eV. According to calculations CuO, ZnO and ZnO-CuO composite show 40, 10 and 68% of degradation efficiency against of rhodamine B dye, respectively. Therefore, the addition of CuO to ZnO increased the photocatalytic activity of the products. The mechanism of photocatalytic activity of synthetic products and copper oxide is discussed in the process of increasing the photocatalytic process intervals. ZnO-CuO nanocomposite has an antibacterial ability against Staphylococcus aureus as a positive bacterium and E. coli as a negative bacterium.