LAUSR

ZrO2 is considered a huge-gap semiconductor (band gap ≈ 5 eV). To improve the visible-light photocatalytic activities of ZrO2, an efficient Cr, SO42− co-doped ZrO2 photocatalyst was synthesized by the simple impregnation method followed by calcination at different calcination temperatures (300, 400, 500, and 600 °C) for 3 h. The synthesized photocatalysts were characterized by x-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy analysis, scanning electron microscopy analysis, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy analysis, FT-IR spectroscopic technique, potentiometric titration and UV–Vis spectroscopy analysis. ZrO2 co-doped with Cr and SO42− shows more efficiency than SO42−-doped ZrO2 in several aspects like surface structure, decreasing electron–hole recombination and band gap energy. The photodegradation of methylene blue dye for SO42−-doped ZrO2 and Cr, SO42−-co-doped ZrO2 has been investigated. The photocatalytic reaction confirmed that the co-doped ZrO2 photocatalyst showed higher photocatalytic activity than mono-doped ZrO2.