Study the Effect of MgO on the Photocatalysis of ZnO Thin Layers

Contamination of ground water systems by organic chemicals pose a serious environmental threat. The severity of this threat is due to their toxicity to animals and humans. Several research groups have investigated photocatalytic oxidation of organic compounds to break them to simpler fragments or have attempted a complete mineralization using different metal oxide semiconductor materials. In recent years semiconductor photocatalysis has become more and more attractive and important domain since it has a great potential to contribute to such environmental problems. One of the most important aspects of environmental photocatalysis is the selection of semiconductor materials like TiO2 which is close to being one of the ideal photocatalysts in several respects. For example it is relatively inexpensive and provides photo generated holes with high oxidizing power due to its wide band gap energy. Many researches have been developed on ZnO material for photocatalysis application using spray pyrolysis and other techniques. MgO has a band gap of about 6.7 eV. For the purpose of changing the electrical and optical properties of ZnO Mg was often doped into or combined with ZnO.