ABSTRACT In this work, zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZNPs) were effectively prepared using plant extracts such as Bougainvillea flower (B.F) and Syzygium cumini (S.C) via a wet chemical preparation method. The obtained ZNPs were characterized by various characterization methods, including X‐ray diffraction (XRD), diffuse reflectance (DR) spectra, and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The crystallite size of the prepared ZNPs was found to be in the range of 20–30 nm. The congo red (CR) dye was utilized to examine the photocatalytic activity of ZNPs under UV light, and ZnO prepared using B.F exhibited the highest degradation efficiency of 89.4%. The intensity ratio of (0 0 2) and (1 0 0) crystalline planes confirms the specific orientation in the (002) plane that is linked to the generation of oxygen vacancies in the prepared ZNPs, which improves their photocatalytic performance, which can also be attributed to the interband gap states. The results obtained from the synthesized ZNPs reveal that plant extract composition affects characteristic properties such as intensity of crystalline planes, particle size, energy bandgap ( E g ), and their photocatalytic properties.
M et al. (Fri,) studied this question.