Synthesis and characterization of mesoporous cobalt oxide nanoparticles in deep eutectic solvent by Sonochemical synthesis method

In recent years, the synthesis of nanoparticles via the green method attracted more attention from scientists regarding environmental problems. In this work, mesoporous cobalt oxide (Co3O4) nanoparticles (NPs) have been synthesized by the sonochemistry method in the presence of Deep Eutectic Solvent (DES). The effect of DES has been investigated on the morphology of the final product and its photocatalytic performance. Different techniques like XRD, SEM, and nitrogen adsorption-desorption are used to characterize the NPs regarding their crystallinity, structure, and porosity. To investigate the effect of DES, different nanoparticles have been synthesized in the absence of DES and compared with the last sample. The results proved that DES has a considerable effect on the porosity and the size of the nanoparticles. Finally, the performance of the final nanoparticles has been investigated in a sonophotocatalytic process. The Co3O4 NPs synthesized in deep eutectic solvent (DES) exhibited excellent sonophotocatalytic (UV+US) performance, degrading 99.54% of the caffeine in 55 min.