Synthesis of the highly efficient catalysts CdZnS@MIL-53(Fe) and ZnS@MIL-53(Fe) and their thermally decomposed derivative for electrochemical OER activity and photodegradation of Rhodamine B dye

The development of a highly efficient catalyst for water splitting and photodegradation of organic dyes has become the focus of a considerable number of research groups. In the work described here CdZnS@MIL-53(Fe) and ZnS@MIL-53(Fe) were synthesized by the sol-vothermal method and subjected to thermal degradation at 520 degrees C in an oxidative envi-ronment to obtain CdZnS/Fe2O3 and ZnS/Fe2O3, respectively. Electrocatalytic activity for the oxygen evolution reaction is analyzed via cyclic voltammetry and linear sweep vol-tammetry. It was found that CdZnS@MIL-53(Fe) shows maximum catalytic activity for the oxygen evolution reaction and delivers 10 mAcm ?2 current density at 95 mV overpotential as compared to MIL-53(Fe)/NF (210 mV) and ZnS@MIL-53(Fe)/NF (112 mV). Similarly, the derivative of it, CdZnS/Fe2O3, shows maximum catalytic activity for the oxygen evolution reaction and delivers 10 mAcm ?2 current density at 90 mV overpotential as compared to Fe2O3 (204 mV) and ZnS/Fe2O3 (115 mV). Based on these results, it is evident that these materials are highly efficient for OER activity compared with other materials in literature. Similarly, CdZnS/Fe2O3 shows maximum photocatalytic activity for the photodegradation of Rhodamine B, up to 75% compared to CdZnS@MIL-53(Fe), which degrades up to 51% of the dye. The synthesized materials were characterized by powdered X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy. Based on these results the aim is to develop more MOF-based materials and their derivatives by simple heat treatment and to implement them in different catalytic applications.(c) 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/).