Nanoflower shaped NiO/CeO₂ p-n junction material for the degradation of pollutant under visible light

The potential need of p–n junctions create an optimistic way of supporting photogenerated electron–hole pair separation and improving interfacial charge-transfer rates. In this context, a p-type semiconductor NiO can couple with n-type CeO₂, thus approving visible light activity by forming p-n junctions. The visible light activity of two large band gap semiconductors still lacks some significant reasons. To solve this, for the first time, this paper reports 3D flower shaped p − n heterojunction NiO/CeO₂ synthesized via thermal decomposition method and studied their properties through various instrumental techniques. Besides, the photocatalytic mechanism of p − n junction and the degrading efficiency of organic pollutant methyl orange (MO) for the synthesized catalysts was discussed. This achieves the outstanding activity and showed better stability which are useful for future applications.